The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Dark Night's Work by Elizabeth Gaskell

#6 in our series by Elizabeth Gaskell

Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.

**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below. We need your donations.

A Dark Night's Work

by Elizabeth Gaskell
February, 2001 [Etext #2522]

The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Dark Night's Work by Elizabeth Gaskell

******This file should be named drknw10.txt or drknw10.zip******
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, drknw11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, drknw10a.txt

This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

from the 1896 Smith, Elder and Co. edition.
Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we do usually do NOT! keep
these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an
up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has
a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
new copy has at least one byte more or less.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text
files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+
If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.
At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly
from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an
assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few
more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we
don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.
We need your donations more than ever!

All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are

tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie-
Mellon University).
For these and other matters, please mail to:
Project Gutenberg
P. O. Box 2782
Champaign, IL 61825
When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director:
Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
We would prefer to send you this information by email.
******
To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser
to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by
author and by title, and includes information about how
to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also
download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This
is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,
for a more complete list of our various sites.
To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any
Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror
sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed
at http://promo.net/pg).
Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.
Example FTP session:
ftp metalab.unc.edu
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
cd etext90 through etext99 etext00 etext01
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
***
**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***

Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other
things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
 does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
net profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
University" within the 60 days following each
date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

A DARK NIGHT'S WORK

CHAPTER I.

In the county town of a certain shire there lived (about forty years
ago) one Mr. Wilkins, a conveyancing attorney of considerable
standing.
The certain shire was but a small county, and the principal town in
it contained only about four thousand inhabitants; so in saying that
Mr. Wilkins was the principal lawyer in Hamley, I say very little,
unless I add that he transacted all the legal business of the gentry
for twenty miles round. His grandfather had established the
connection; his father had consolidated and strengthened it, and,
indeed, by his wise and upright conduct, as well as by his
professional skill, had obtained for himself the position of
confidential friend to many of the surrounding families of
distinction. He visited among them in a way which no mere lawyer had
ever done before; dined at their tables--he alone, not accompanied by
his wife, be it observed; rode to the meet occasionally as if by
accident, although he was as well mounted as any squire among them,
and was often persuaded (after a little coquetting about
"professional engagements," and "being wanted at the office") to have
a run with his clients; nay, once or twice he forgot his usual
caution, was first in at the death, and rode home with the brush.
But in general he knew his place; as his place was held to be in that
aristocratic county, and in those days. Nor let be supposed that he
was in any way a toadeater. He respected himself too much for that.
He would give the most unpalatable advice, if need were; would
counsel an unsparing reduction of expenditure to an extravagant man;
would recommend such an abatement of family pride as paved the way
for one or two happy marriages in some instances; nay, what was the
most likely piece of conduct of all to give offence forty years ago,
he would speak up for an unjustly-used tenant; and that with so much
temperate and well-timed wisdom and good feeling, that he more than
once gained his point. He had one son, Edward. This boy was the
secret joy and pride of his father's heart. For himself he was not
in the least ambitious, but it did cost him a hard struggle to
acknowledge that his own business was too lucrative, and brought in
too large an income, to pass away into the hands of a stranger, as it
would do if he indulged his ambition for his son by giving him a
college education and making him into a barrister. This
determination on the more prudent side of the argument took place
while Edward was at Eton. The lad had, perhaps, the largest
allowance of pocket-money of any boy at school; and he had always
looked forward to going to Christ Church along with his fellows, the
sons of the squires, his father's employers. It was a severe
mortification to him to find that his destiny was changed, and that
he had to return to Hamley to be articled to his father, and to
assume the hereditary subservient position to lads whom he had licked
in the play-ground, and beaten at learning.
His father tried to compensate him for the disappointment by every
indulgence which money could purchase. Edward's horses were even
finer than those of his father; his literary tastes were kept up and
fostered, by his father's permission to form an extensive library,
for which purpose a noble room was added to Mr. Wilkins's already
extensive house in the suburbs of Hamley. And after his year of
legal study in London his father sent him to make the grand tour,
with something very like carte blanche as to expenditure, to judge
from the packages which were sent home from various parts of the
Continent.
At last he came home--came back to settle as his father's partner at
Hamley. He was a son to be proud of, and right down proud was old
Mr. Wilkins of his handsome, accomplished, gentlemanly lad. For
Edward was not one to be spoilt by the course of indulgence he had
passed through; at least, if it had done him an injury, the effects
were at present hidden from view. He had no vulgar vices; he was,
indeed, rather too refined for the society he was likely to be thrown
into, even supposing that society to consist of the highest of his
father's employers. He was well read, and an artist of no mean
pretensions. Above all, "his heart was in the right place," as his
father used to observe. Nothing could exceed the deference he always
showed to him. His mother had long been dead.
I do not know whether it was Edward's own ambition or his proud
father's wishes that had led him to attend the Hamley assemblies. I
should conjecture the latter, for Edward had of himself too much good
taste to wish to intrude into any society. In the opinion of all the
shire, no society had more reason to consider itself select than that
which met at every full moon in the Hamley assembly-room, an
excrescence built on to the principal inn in the town by the joint
subscription of all the county families. Into those choice and
mysterious precincts no towns person was ever allowed to enter; no
professional man might set his foot therein; no infantry officer saw
the interior of that ball, or that card-room. The old original
subscribers would fain have had a man prove his sixteen quarterings
before he might make his bow to the queen of the night; but the old
original founders of the Hamley assemblies were dropping off; minuets
had vanished with them, country dances had died away; quadrilles were
in high vogue--nay, one or two of the high magnates of --shire were
trying to introduce waltzing, as they had seen it in London, where it
had come in with the visit of the allied sovereigns, when Edward
Wilkins made his debut on these boards. He had been at many splendid
assemblies abroad, but still the little old ballroom attached to the
George Inn in his native town was to him a place grander and more
awful than the most magnificent saloons he had seen in Paris or Rome.
He laughed at himself for this unreasonable feeling of awe; but there
it was notwithstanding. He had been dining at the house of one of
the lesser gentry, who was under considerable obligations to his
father, and who was the parent of eight "muckle-mou'ed" daughters, so
hardly likely to oppose much aristocratic resistance to the elder Mr.
Wilkins's clearly implied wish that Edward should be presented at the
Hamley assembly-rooms. But many a squire glowered and looked black
at the introduction of Wilkins the attorney's son into the sacred
precincts; and perhaps there would have been much more mortification
than pleasure in this assembly to the young man, had it not been for
an incident that occurred pretty late in the evening. The lord-
lieutenant of the county usually came with a large party to the
Hamley assemblies once in a season; and this night he was expected,
and with him a fashionable duchess and her daughters. But time wore
on, and they did not make their appearance. At last there was a
rustling and a bustling, and in sailed the superb party. For a few
minutes dancing was stopped; the earl led the duchess to a sofa; some
of their acquaintances came up to speak to them; and then the
quadrilles were finished in rather a flat manner. A country dance
followed, in which none of the lord-lieutenant's party joined; then
there was a consultation, a request, an inspection of the dancers, a
message to the orchestra, and the band struck up a waltz; the
duchess's daughters flew off to the music, and some more young ladies
seemed ready to follow, but, alas! there was a lack of gentlemen
acquainted with the new-fashioned dance. One of the stewards
bethought him of young Wilkins, only just returned from the
Continent. Edward was a beautiful dancer, and waltzed to admiration.
For his next partner he had one of the Lady --s; for the duchess, to
whom the--shire squires and their little county politics and
contempts were alike unknown, saw no reason why her lovely Lady Sophy
should not have a good partner, whatever his pedigree might be, and
begged the stewards to introduce Mr. Wilkins to her. After this
night his fortune was made with the young ladies of the Hamley
assemblies. He was not unpopular with the mammas; but the heavy
squires still looked at him askance, and the heirs (whom he had
licked at Eton) called him an upstart behind his back.

CHAPTER II.

It was not a satisfactory situation. Mr. Wilkins had given his son
an education and tastes beyond his position. He could not associate
with either profit or pleasure with the doctor or the brewer of
Hamley; the vicar was old and deaf, the curate a raw young man, half
frightened at the sound of his own voice. Then, as to matrimony--for
the idea of his marriage was hardly more present in Edward's mind
than in that of his father--he could scarcely fancy bringing home any
one of the young ladies of Hamley to the elegant mansion, so full of
suggestion and association to an educated person, so inappropriate a
dwelling for an ignorant, uncouth, ill-brought-up girl. Yet Edward
was fully aware, if his fond father was not, that of all the young
ladies who were glad enough of him as a partner at the Hamley
assemblies, there was not of them but would have considered herself
affronted by an offer of marriage from an attorney, the son and
grandson of attorneys. The young man had perhaps received many a
slight and mortification pretty quietly during these years, which yet
told upon his character in after life. Even at this very time they
were having their effect. He was of too sweet a disposition to show
resentment, as many men would have done. But nevertheless he took a
secret pleasure in the power which his father's money gave him. He
would buy an expensive horse after five minutes' conversation as to
the price, about which a needy heir of one of the proud county
families had been haggling for three weeks. His dogs were from the
best kennels in England, no matter at what cost; his guns were the
newest and most improved make; and all these were expenses on objects
which were among those of daily envy to the squires and squires' sons
around. They did not much care for the treasures of art, which
report said were being accumulated in Mr. Wilkins's house. But they
did covet the horses and hounds he possessed, and the young man knew
that they coveted, and rejoiced in it.
By-and-by he formed a marriage, which went as near as marriages ever
do towards pleasing everybody. He was desperately in love with Miss
Lamotte, so he was delighted when she consented to be his wife. His
father was delighted in his delight, and, besides, was charmed to
remember that Miss Lamotte's mother had been Sir Frank Holster's
younger sister, and that, although her marriage had been disowned by
her family, as beneath her in rank, yet no one could efface her name
out of the Baronetage, where Lettice, youngest daughter of Sir Mark
Holster, born 1772, married H. Lamotte, 1799, died 1810, was duly
chronicled. She had left two children, a boy and a girl, of whom
their uncle, Sir Frank, took charge, as their father was worse than
dead--an outlaw whose name was never mentioned. Mark Lamotte was in
the army; Lettice had a dependent position in her uncle's family; not
intentionally made more dependent than was rendered necessary by
circumstances, but still dependent enough to grate on the feelings of
a sensitive girl, whose natural susceptibilty to slights was
redoubled by the constant recollection of her father's disgrace. As
Mr. Wilkins well knew, Sir Frank was considerably involved; but it
was with very mixed feelings that he listened to the suit which would
provide his penniless niece with a comfortable, not to say luxurious,
home, and with a handsome, accomplished young man of unblemished
character for a husband. He said one or two bitter and insolent
things to Mr. Wilkins, even while he was giving his consent to the
match; that was his temper, his proud, evil temper; but he really and
permanently was satisfied with the connection, though he would
occasionally turn round on his nephew-in-law, and sting him with a
covert insult, as to his want of birth, and the inferior position
which he held, forgetting, apparently, that his own brother-in-law
and Lettice's father might be at any moment brought to the bar of
justice if he attempted to re-enter his native country.
Edward was annoyed at all this; Lettice resented it. She loved her
husband dearly, and was proud of him, for she had discernment enough
to see how superior he was in every way to her cousins, the young
Holsters, who borrowed his horses, drank his wines, and yet had
caught their father's habit of sneering at his profession. Lettice
wished that Edward would content himself with a purely domestic life,
would let himself drop out of the company of the --shire squirearchy,
and find his relaxation with her, in their luxurious library, or
lovely drawing-room, so full of white gleaming statues, and gems of
pictures. But, perhaps, this was too much to expect of any man,
especially of one who felt himself fitted in many ways to shine in
society, and who was social by nature. Sociality in that county at
that time meant conviviality. Edward did not care for wine, and yet
he was obliged to drink--and by-and-by he grew to pique himself on
his character as a judge of wine. His father by this time was dead;
dead, happy old man, with a contented heart--his affairs flourishing,
his poorer neighbours loving him, his richer respecting him, his son
and daughter-in-law, the most affectionate and devoted that ever man
had, and his healthy conscience at peace with his God.
Lettice could have lived to herself and her husband and children.
Edward daily required more and more the stimulus of society. His
wife wondered how he could care to accept dinner invitations from
people who treated him as "Wilkins the attorney, a very good sort of
fellow," as they introduced him to strangers who might be staying in
the country, but who had no power to appreciate the taste, the
talents, the impulsive artistic nature which she held so dear. She
forgot that by accepting such invitations Edward was occasionally
brought into contact with people not merely of high conventional, but
of high intellectual rank; that when a certain amount of wine had
dissipated his sense of inferiority of rank and position, he was a
brilliant talker, a man to be listened to and admired even by
wandering London statesmen, professional diners-out, or any great
authors who might find themselves visitors in a --shire country-
house. What she would have had him share from the pride of her
heart, she should have warned him to avoid from the temptations to
sinful extravagance which it led him into. He had begun to spend
more than he ought, not in intellectual--though that would have been
wrong--but in purely sensual things. His wines, his table, should be
such as no squire's purse or palate could command. His dinner-
parties--small in number, the viands rare and delicate in quality,
and sent up to table by an Italian cook--should be such as even the
London stars should notice with admiration. He would have Lettice
dressed in the richest materials, the most delicate lace; jewellery,
he said, was beyond their means; glancing with proud humility at the
diamonds of the elder ladies, and the alloyed gold of the younger.
But he managed to spend as much on his wife's lace as would have
bought many a set of inferior jewellery. Lettice well became it all.
If as people said, her father had been nothing but a French
adventurer, she bore traces of her nature in her grace, her delicacy,
her fascinating and elegant ways of doing all things. She was made
for society; and yet she hated it. And one day she went out of it
altogether and for evermore. She had been well in the morning when
Edward went down to his office in Hamley. At noon he was sent for by
hurried trembling messengers. When he got home breathless and
uncomprehending, she was past speech. One glance from her lovely
loving black eyes showed that she recognised him with the passionate
yearning that had been one of the characteristics of her love through
life. There was no word passed between them. He could not speak,
any more than could she. He knelt down by her. She was dying; she
was dead; and he knelt on immovable. They brought him his eldest
child, Ellinor, in utter despair what to do in order to rouse him.
They had no thought as to the effect on her, hitherto shut up in the
nursery during this busy day of confusion and alarm. The child had
no idea of death, and her father, kneeling and tearless, was far less
an object of surprise or interest to her than her mother, lying still
and white, and not turning her head to smile at her darling.
"Mamma! mamma!" cried the child, in shapeless terror. But the mother
never stirred; and the father hid his face yet deeper in the
bedclothes, to stifle a cry as if a sharp knife had pierced his
heart. The child forced her impetuous way from her attendants, and
rushed to the bed. Undeterred by deadly cold or stony immobility,
she kissed the lips and stroked the glossy raven hair, murmuring
sweet words of wild love, such as had passed between the mother and
child often and often when no witnesses were by; and altogether
seemed so nearly beside herself in an agony of love and terror, that
Edward arose, and softly taking her in his arms, bore her away, lying
back like one dead (so exhausted was she by the terrible emotion they
had forced on her childish heart), into his study, a little room
opening out of the grand library, where on happy evenings, never to
come again, he and his wife were wont to retire to have coffee
together, and then perhaps stroll out of the glass-door into the open
air, the shrubbery, the fields--never more to be trodden by those
dear feet. What passed between father and child in this seclusion
none could tell. Late in the evening Ellinor's supper was sent for,
and the servant who brought it in saw the child lying as one dead in
her father's arms, and before he left the room watched his master
feeding her, the girl of six years of age, with as tender care as if
she had been a baby of six months.

CHAPTER III.

From that time the tie between father and daughter grew very strong
and tender indeed. Ellinor, it is true, divided her affection
between her baby sister and her papa; but he, caring little for
babies, had only a theoretic regard for his younger child, while the
elder absorbed all his love. Every day that he dined at home Ellinor
was placed opposite to him while he ate his late dinner; she sat
where her mother had done during the meal, although she had dined and
even supped some time before on the more primitive nursery fare. It
was half pitiful, half amusing, to see the little girl's grave,
thoughtful ways and modes of speech, as if trying to act up to the
dignity of her place as her father's companion, till sometimes the
little head nodded off to slumber in the middle of lisping some wise
little speech. "Old-fashioned," the nurses called her, and
prophesied that she would not live long in consequence of her old-
fashionedness. But instead of the fulfilment of this prophecy, the
fat bright baby was seized with fits, and was well, ill, and dead in
a day! Ellinor's grief was something alarming, from its quietness
and concealment. She waited till she was left--as she thought--alone
at nights, and then sobbed and cried her passionate cry for "Baby,
baby, come back to me--come back;" till every one feared for the
health of the frail little girl whose childish affections had had to
stand two such shocks. Her father put aside all business, all
pleasure of every kind, to win his darling from her grief. No mother
could have done more, no tenderest nurse done half so much as Mr.
Wilkins then did for Ellinor.
If it had not been for him she would have just died of her grief. As
it was, she overcame it--but slowly, wearily--hardly letting herself
love anyone for some time, as if she instinctively feared lest all
her strong attachments should find a sudden end in death. Her love--
thus dammed up into a small space--at last burst its banks, and
overflowed on her father. It was a rich reward to him for all his
care of her, and he took delight--perhaps a selfish delight--in all
the many pretty ways she perpetually found of convincing him, if he
had needed conviction, that he was ever the first object with her.
The nurse told him that half an hour or so before the earliest time
at which he could be expected home in the evenings, Miss Ellinor
began to fold up her doll's things and lull the inanimate treasure to
sleep. Then she would sit and listen with an intensity of attention
for his footstep. Once the nurse had expressed some wonder at the
distance at which Ellinor could hear her father's approach, saying
that she had listened and could not hear a sound, to which Ellinor
had replied:
"Of course you cannot; he is not your papa!"
Then, when he went away in the morning, after he had kissed her,
Ellinor would run to a certain window from which she could watch him
up the lane, now hidden behind a hedge, now reappearing through an
open space, again out of sight, till he reached a great old beech-
tree, where for an instant more she saw him. And then she would turn
away with a sigh, sometimes reassuring her unspoken fears by saying
softly to herself,
"He will come again to-night."
Mr. Wilkins liked to feel his child dependent on him for all her
pleasures. He was even a little jealous of anyone who devised a
treat or conferred a present, the first news of which did not come
from or through him.
At last it was necessary that Ellinor should have some more
instruction than her good old nurse could give. Her father did not
care to take upon himself the office of teacher, which he thought he
foresaw would necessitate occasional blame, an occasional exercise of
authority, which might possibly render him less idolized by his
little girl; so he commissioned Lady Holster to choose out one among
her many protegees for a governess to his daughter. Now, Lady
Holster, who kept a sort of amateur county register-office, was only
too glad to be made of use in this way; but when she inquired a
little further as to the sort of person required, all she could
extract from Mr. Wilkins was:
"You know the kind of education a lady should have, and will, I am
sure, choose a governess for Ellinor better than I could direct you.
Only, please, choose some one who will not marry me, and who will let
Ellinor go on making my tea, and doing pretty much what she likes,
for she is so good they need not try to make her better, only to
teach her what a lady should know."
Miss Monro was selected--a plain, intelligent, quiet woman of forty--
and it was difficult to decide whether she or Mr. Wilkins took the
most pains to avoid each other, acting with regard to Ellinor, pretty
much like the famous Adam and Eve in the weather-glass: when the one
came out the other went in. Miss Monro had been tossed about and
overworked quite enough in her life not to value the privilege and
indulgence of her evenings to herself, her comfortable schoolroom,
her quiet cozy teas, her book, or her letter-writing afterwards. By
mutual agreement she did not interfere with Ellinor and her ways and
occupations on the evenings when the girl had not her father for
companion; and these occasions became more and more frequent as years
passed on, and the deep shadow was lightened which the sudden death
that had visited his household had cast over him. As I have said
before, he was always a popular man at dinner-parties. His amount of
intelligence and accomplishment was rare in --shire, and if it
required more wine than formerly to bring his conversation up to the
desired point of range and brilliancy, wine was not an article spared
or grudged at the county dinner-tables. Occasionally his business
took him up to London. Hurried as these journeys might be, he never
returned without a new game, a new toy of some kind, to "make home
pleasant to his little maid," as he expressed himself.
He liked, too, to see what was doing in art, or in literature; and as
he gave pretty extensive orders for anything he admired, he was
almost sure to be followed down to Hamley by one or two packages or
parcels, the arrival and opening of which began soon to form the
pleasant epochs in Ellinor's grave though happy life.
The only person of his own standing with whom Mr. Wilkins kept up any
intercourse in Hamley was the new clergyman, a bachelor, about his
own age, a learned man, a fellow of his college, whose first claim on
Mr. Wilkins's attention was the fact that he had been travelling-
bachelor for his university, and had consequently been on the
Continent about the very same two years that Mr. Wilkins had been
there; and although they had never met, yet they had many common
acquaintances and common recollections to talk over of this period,
which, after all, had been about the most bright and hopeful of Mr.
Wilkins's life.
Mr. Ness had an occasional pupil; that is to say, he never put
himself out of the way to obtain pupils, but did not refuse the
entreaties sometimes made to him that he would prepare a young man
for college, by allowing the said young man to reside and read with
him. "Ness's men" took rather high honours, for the tutor, too
indolent to find out work for himself, had a certain pride in doing
well the work that was found for him.
When Ellinor was somewhere about fourteen, a young Mr. Corbet came to
be pupil to Mr. Ness. Her father always called on the young men
reading with the clergyman, and asked them to his house. His
hospitality had in course of time lost its recherche and elegant
character, but was always generous, and often profuse. Besides, it
was in his character to like the joyous, thoughtless company of the
young better than that of the old--given the same amount of
refinement and education in both.
Mr. Corbet was a young man of very good family, from a distant
county. If his character had not been so grave and deliberate, his
years would only have entitled him to be called a boy, for he was but
eighteen at the time when he came to read with Mr. Ness. But many
men of five-and-twenty have not reflected so deeply as this young Mr.
Corbet already had. He had considered and almost matured his plan
for life; had ascertained what objects he desired most to accomplish
in the dim future, which is to many at his age only a shapeless mist;
and had resolved on certain steady courses of action by which such
objects were most likely to be secured. A younger son, his family
connections and family interest pre-arranged a legal career for him;
and it was in accordance with his own tastes and talents. All,
however, which his father hoped for him was, that he might be able to
make an income sufficient for a gentleman to live on. Old Mr. Corbet
was hardly to be called ambitious, or, if he were, his ambition was
limited to views for the eldest son. But Ralph intended to be a
distinguished lawyer, not so much for the vision of the woolsack,
which I suppose dances before the imagination of every young lawyer,
as for the grand intellectual exercise, and consequent power over
mankind, that distinguished lawyers may always possess if they
choose. A seat in Parliament, statesmanship, and all the great scope
for a powerful and active mind that lay on each side of such a
career--these were the objects which Ralph Corbet set before himself.
To take high honours at college was the first step to be
accomplished; and in order to achieve this Ralph had, not persuaded--
persuasion was a weak instrument which he despised--but gravely
reasoned his father into consenting to pay the large sum which Mr.
Ness expected with a pupil. The good-natured old squire was rather
pressed for ready money, but sooner than listen to an argument
instead of taking his nap after dinner he would have yielded
anything. But this did not satisfy Ralph; his father's reason must
be convinced of the desirability of the step, as well as his weak
will give way. The squire listened, looked wise, sighed; spoke of
Edward's extravagance and the girls' expenses, grew sleepy, and said,
"Very true," "That is but reasonable, certainly," glanced at the
door, and wondered when his son would have ended his talking and go
into the drawing-room; and at length found himself writing the
desired letter to Mr. Ness, consenting to everything, terms and all.
Mr. Ness never had a more satisfactory pupil; one whom he could treat
more as an intellectual equal.
Mr. Corbet, as Ralph was always called in Hamley, was resolute in his
cultivation of himself, even exceeding what his tutor demanded of
him. He was greedy of information in the hours not devoted to
absolute study. Mr. Ness enjoyed giving information, but most of all
he liked the hard tough arguments on all metaphysical and ethical
questions in which Mr. Corbet delighted to engage him. They lived
together on terms of happy equality, having thus much in common.
They were essentially different, however, although there were so many
points of resemblance. Mr. Ness was unworldly as far as the idea of
real unworldliness is compatible with a turn for self-indulgence and
indolence; while Mr. Corbet was deeply, radically worldly, yet for
the accomplishment of his object could deny himself all the careless
pleasures natural to his age. The tutor and pupil allowed themselves
one frequent relaxation, that of Mr. Wilkins's company. Mr. Ness
would stroll to the office after the six hours' hard reading were
over--leaving Mr. Corbet still bent over the table, book bestrewn--
and see what Mr. Wilkins's engagements were. If he had nothing
better to do that evening, he was either asked to dine at the
parsonage, or he, in his careless hospitable way, invited the other
two to dine with him, Ellinor forming the fourth at table, as far as
seats went, although her dinner had been eaten early with Miss Monro.
She was little and slight of her age, and her father never seemed to
understand how she was passing out of childhood. Yet while in
stature she was like a child; in intellect, in force of character, in
strength of clinging affection, she was a woman. There might be much
of the simplicity of a child about her, there was little of the
undeveloped girl, varying from day to day like an April sky, careless
as to which way her own character is tending. So the two young
people sat with their elders, and both relished the company they were
thus prematurely thrown into. Mr. Corbet talked as much as either of
the other two gentlemen; opposing and disputing on any side, as if to
find out how much he could urge against received opinions. Ellinor
sat silent; her dark eyes flashing from time to time in vehement
interest--sometimes in vehement indignation if Mr. Corbet, riding a-
tilt at everyone, ventured to attack her father. He saw how this
course excited her, and rather liked pursuing it in consequence; he
thought it only amused him.
Another way in which Ellinor and Mr. Corbet were thrown together
occasionally was this: Mr. Ness and Mr. Wilkins shared the same
Times between them; and it was Ellinor's duty to see that the paper
was regularly taken from her father's house to the parsonage. Her
father liked to dawdle over it. Until Mr. Corbet had come to live
with him, Mr. Ness had not much cared at what time it was passed on
to him; but the young man took a strong interest in all public
events, and especially in all that was said about them. He grew
impatient if the paper was not forthcoming, and would set off himself
to go for it, sometimes meeting the penitent breathless Ellinor in
the long lane which led from Hamley to Mr. Wilkins's house. At first
he used to receive her eager "Oh! I am so sorry, Mr. Corbet, but papa
has only just done with it," rather gruffly. After a time he had the
grace to tell her it did not signify; and by-and-by he would turn
back with her to give her some advice about her garden, or her
plants--for his mother and sisters were first-rate practical
gardeners, and he himself was, as he expressed it, "a capital
consulting physician for a sickly plant."
All this time his voice, his step, never raised the child's colour
one shade the higher, never made her heart beat the least quicker, as
the slightest sign of her father's approach was wont to do. She
learnt to rely on Mr. Corbet for advice, for a little occasional
sympathy, and for much condescending attention. He also gave her
more fault-finding than all the rest of the world put together; and,
curiously enough, she was grateful to him for it, for she really was
humble and wished to improve. He liked the attitude of superiority
which this implied and exercised right gave him. They were very good
friends at present. Nothing more.
All this time I have spoken only of Mr. Wilkins's life as he stood in
relation to his daughter. But there is far more to be said about it.
After his wife's death, he withdrew himself from society for a year
or two in a more positive and decided manner than is common with
widowers. It was during this retirement of his that he riveted his
little daughter's heart in such a way as to influence all her future
life.
When he began to go out again, it might have been perceived--had any
one cared to notice--how much the different characters of his father
and wife had influenced him and kept him steady. Not that he broke
out into any immoral conduct, but he gave up time to pleasure, which
both old Mr. Wilkins and Lettice would have quietly induced him to
spend in the office, superintending his business. His indulgence in
hunting, and all field sports, had hitherto been only occasional;
they now became habitual, as far as the seasons permitted. He shared
a moor in Scotland with one of the Holsters one year, persuading
himself that the bracing air was good for Ellinor's health. But the
year afterwards he took another, this time joining with a comparative
stranger; and on this moor there was no house to which it was fit to
bring a child and her attendants. He persuaded himself that by
frequent journeys he could make up for his absences from Hamley. But
journeys cost money; and he was often away from his office when
important business required attending to. There was some talk of a
new attorney setting up in Hamley, to be supported by one or two of
the more influential county families, who had found Wilkins not so
attentive as his father. Sir Frank Holster sent for his relation,
and told him of this project, speaking to him, at the same time, in
pretty round terms on the folly of the life he was leading. Foolish
it certainly was, and as such Mr. Wilkins was secretly acknowledging
it; but when Sir Frank, lashing himself, began to talk of his
hearer's presumption in joining the hunt, in aping the mode of life
and amusements of the landed gentry, Edward fired up. He knew how
much Sir Frank was dipped, and comparing it with the round sum his
own father had left him, he said some plain truths to Sir Frank which
the latter never forgave, and henceforth there was no intercourse
between Holster Court and Ford Bank, as Mr. Edward Wilkins had
christened his father's house on his first return from the Continent.
The conversation had two consequences besides the immediate one of
the quarrel. Mr. Wilkins advertised for a responsible and
confidential clerk to conduct the business under his own
superintendence; and he also wrote to the Heralds' College to ask if
he did not belong to the family bearing the same name in South Wales-
-those who have since reassumed their ancient name of De Winton.
Both applications were favorably answered. A skilful, experienced,
middle-aged clerk was recommended to him by one of the principal
legal firms in London, and immediately engaged to come to Hamley at
his own terms; which were pretty high. But, as Mr. Wilkins said it
was worth any money to pay for the relief from constant
responsibility which such a business as his involved, some people
remarked that he had never appeared to feel the responsibility very
much hitherto, as witness his absences in Scotland, and his various
social engagements when at home; it had been very different (they
said) in his father's day. The Heralds' College held out hopes of
affiliating him to the South Wales family, but it would require time
and money to make the requisite inquiries and substantiate the claim.
Now, in many a place there would be none to contest the right a man
might have to assert that he belonged to such and such a family, or
even to assume their arms. But it was otherwise in --shire.
Everyone was up in genealogy and heraldry, and considered filching a
name and a pedigree a far worse sin than any of those mentioned on
the Commandments. There were those among them who would doubt and
dispute even the decision of the Heralds' College; but with it, if in
his favour, Mr. Wilkins intended to be satisfied, and accordingly he
wrote in reply to their letter to say, that of course he was aware
such inquiries would take a considerable sum of money, but still he
wished them to be made, and that speedily.
Before the end of the year he went up to London to order a brougham
to be built (for Ellinor to drive out in wet weather, he said; but as
going in a closed carriage always made her ill, he used it
principally himself in driving to dinner-parties), with the De Winton
Wilkinses' arms neatly emblazoned on panel and harness. Hitherto he
had always gone about in a dog-cart--the immediate descendant of his
father's old-fashioned gig.
For all this, the squires, his employers, only laughed at him and did
not treat him with one whit more respect.
Mr. Dunster, the new clerk, was a quiet, respectable-looking man; you
could not call him a gentleman in manner, and yet no one could say he
was vulgar. He had not much varying expression on his face, but a
permanent one of thoughtful consideration of the subject in hand,
whatever it might be, that would have fitted as well with the
profession of medicine as with that of law, and was quite the right
look for either. Occasionally a bright flash of sudden intelligence
lightened up his deep-sunk eyes, but even this was quickly
extinguished as by some inward repression, and the habitually
reflective, subdued expression returned to the face. As soon as he
came into his situation, he first began quietly to arrange the
papers, and next the business of which they were the outer sign, into
more methodical order than they had been in since old Mr. Wilkins's
death. Punctual to a moment himself, he looked his displeased
surprise when the inferior clerks came tumbling in half an hour after
the time in the morning; and his look was more effective than many
men's words; henceforward the subordinates were within five minutes
of the appointed hour for opening the office; but still he was always
there before them. Mr. Wilkins himself winced under his new clerk's
order and punctuality; Mr. Dunster's raised eyebrow and contraction
of the lips at some woeful confusion in the business of the office,
chafed Mr. Wilkins more, far more than any open expression of opinion
would have done; for that he could have met, and explained away as he
fancied. A secret respectful dislike grew up in his bosom against
Mr. Dunster. He esteemed him, he valued him, and he could not bear
him. Year after year Mr. Wilkins had become more under the influence
of his feelings, and less under the command of his reason. He rather
cherished than repressed his nervous repugnance to the harsh measured
tones of Mr. Dunster's voice; the latter spoke with a provincial
twang which grated on his employer's sensitive ear. He was annoyed
at a certain green coat which his new clerk brought with him, and he
watched its increasing shabbiness with a sort of childish pleasure.
But by-and-by Mr. Wilkins found out that, from some perversity of
taste, Mr. Dunster always had his coats, Sunday and working-day, made
of this obnoxious colour; and this knowledge did not diminish his
secret irritation. The worst of all, perhaps, was, that Mr. Dunster
was really invaluable in many ways; "a perfect treasure," as Mr.
Wilkins used to term him in speaking of him after dinner; but, for
all that, he came to hate his "perfect treasure," as he gradually
felt that Dunster had become so indispensable to the business that
his chief could not do without him.
The clients re-echoed Mr. Wilkins's words, and spoke of Mr. Dunster
as invaluable to his master; a thorough treasure, the very saving of
the business. They had not been better attended to, not even in old
Mr. Wilkins's days; such a clear head, such a knowledge of law, such
a steady, upright fellow, always at his post. The grating voice, the
drawling accent, the bottle-green coat, were nothing to them; far
less noticed, in fact, than Wilkins's expensive habits, the money he
paid for his wine and horses, and the nonsense of claiming kin with
the Welsh Wilkinses, and setting up his brougham to drive about --
shire lanes, and be knocked to pieces over the rough round paving-
stones thereof.
All these remarks did not come near Ellinor to trouble her life. To
her, her dear father was the first of human beings; so sweet, so
good, so kind, so charming in conversation, so full of accomplishment
and information! To her healthy, happy mind every one turned their
bright side. She loved Miss Monro--all the servants--especially
Dixon, the coachman. He had been her father's playfellow as a boy,
and, with all his respect and admiration for his master, the freedom
of intercourse that had been established between them then had never
been quite lost. Dixon was a fine, stalwart old fellow, and was as
harmonious in his ways with his master as Mr. Dunster was discordant;
accordingly he was a great favourite, and could say many a thing
which might have been taken as impertinent from another servant.
He was Ellinor's great confidant about many of her little plans and
projects; things that she dared not speak of to Mr. Corbet, who,
after her father and Dixon, was her next best friend. This intimacy
with Dixon displeased Mr. Corbet. He once or twice insinuated that
he did not think it was well to talk so familiarly as Ellinor did
with a servant--one out of a completely different class--such as
Dixon. Ellinor did not easily take hints; every one had spoken plain
out to her hitherto; so Mr. Corbet had to say his meaning plain out
at last. Then, for the first time, he saw her angry; but she was too
young, too childish, to have words at will to express her feelings;
she only could say broken beginnings of sentences, such as "What a
shame! Good, dear Dixon, who is as loyal and true and kind as any
nobleman. I like him far better than you, Mr. Corbet, and I shall
talk to him." And then she burst into tears and ran away, and would
not come to wish Mr. Corbet good-bye, though she knew she should not
see him again for a long time, as he was returning the next day to
his father's house, from whence he would go to Cambridge.
He was annoyed at this result of the good advice he had thought
himself bound to give to a motherless girl, who had no one to
instruct her in the proprieties in which his own sisters were brought
up; he left Hamley both sorry and displeased. As for Ellinor, when
she found out the next day that he really was gone--gone without even
coming to Ford Bank again to see if she were not penitent for her
angry words--gone without saying or hearing a word of good-bye--she
shut herself up in her room, and cried more bitterly than ever,
because anger against herself was mixed with her regret for his loss.
Luckily, her father was dining out, or he would have inquired what
was the matter with his darling; and she would have had to try to
explain what could not be explained. As it was, she sat with her
back to the light during the schoolroom tea, and afterwards, when
Miss Monro had settled down to her study of the Spanish language,
Ellinor stole out into the garden, meaning to have a fresh cry over
her own naughtiness and Mr. Corbet's departure; but the August
evening was still and calm, and put her passionate grief to shame,
hushing her up, as it were, with the other young creatures, who were
being soothed to rest by the serene time of day, and the subdued
light of the twilight sky.
There was a piece of ground surrounding the flower-garden, which was
not shrubbery, nor wood, nor kitchen garden--only a grassy bit, out
of which a group of old forest trees sprang. Their roots were heaved
above ground; their leaves fell in autumn so profusely that the turf
was ragged and bare in spring; but, to make up for this, there never
was such a place for snowdrops.
The roots of these old trees were Ellinor's favourite play-place;
this space between these two was her doll's kitchen, that its
drawing-room, and so on. Mr. Corbet rather despised her contrivances
for doll's furniture, so she had not often brought him here; but
Dixon delighted in them, and contrived and planned with the eagerness
of six years old rather than forty. To-night Ellinor went to this
place, and there were all a new collection of ornaments for Miss
Dolly's sitting-room made out of fir-bobs, in the prettiest and most
ingenious way. She knew it was Dixon's doing and rushed off in
search of him to thank him.
"What's the matter with my pretty?" asked Dixon, as soon as the
pleasant excitement of thanking and being thanked was over, and he
had leisure to look at her tear-stained face.
"Oh, I don't know! Never mind," said she, reddening.
Dixon was silent for a minute or two, while she tried to turn off his
attention by her hurried prattle.
"There's no trouble afoot that I can mend?" asked he, in a minute or
two.
"Oh, no! It's really nothing--nothing at all," said she. "It's only
that Mr. Corbet went away without saying good-bye to me, that's all."
And she looked as if she should have liked to cry again.
"That was not manners," said Dixon, decisively.
"But it was my fault," replied Ellinor, pleading against the
condemnation.
Dixon looked at her pretty sharply from under his ragged bushy
eyebrows.
"He had been giving me a lecture, and saying I didn't do what his
sisters did--just as if I were to be always trying to be like
somebody else--and I was cross and ran away."
"Then it was Missy who wouldn't say good-bye. That was not manners
in Missy."
"But, Dixon, I don't like being lectured!"
"I reckon you don't get much of it. But, indeed, my pretty, I
daresay Mr. Corbet was in the right; for, you see, master is busy,
and Miss Monro is so dreadful learned, and your poor mother is dead
and gone, and you have no one to teach you how young ladies go on;
and by all accounts Mr. Corbet comes of a good family. I've heard
say his father had the best stud-farm in all Shropshire, and spared
no money upon it; and the young ladies his sisters will have been
taught the best of manners; it might be well for my pretty to hear
how they go on."
"You dear old Dixon, you don't know anything about my lecture, and
I'm not going to tell you. Only I daresay Mr. Corbet might be a
little bit right, though I'm sure he was a great deal wrong."
"But you'll not go on a-fretting--you won't now, there's a good young
lady--for master won't like it, and it'll make him uneasy, and he's
enough of trouble without your red eyes, bless them."
"Trouble--papa, trouble! Oh, Dixon! what do you mean?" exclaimed
Ellinor, her face taking all a woman's intensity of expression in a
minute.
"Nay, I know nought," said Dixon, evasively. "Only that Dunster
fellow is not to my mind, and I think he potters the master sadly
with his fid-fad ways."
"I hate Mr. Dunster!" said Ellinor, vehemently. "I won't speak a
word to him the next time he comes to dine with papa."
"Missy will do what papa likes best," said Dixon, admonishingly; and
with this the pair of "friends" parted,

CHAPTER IV.

The summer afterwards Mr. Corbet came again to read with Mr. Ness.
He did not perceive any alteration in himself, and indeed his early-
matured character had hardly made progress during the last twelve
months whatever intellectual acquirements he might have made.
Therefore it was astonishing to him to see the alteration in Ellinor
Wilkins. She had shot up from a rather puny girl to a tall, slight
young lady, with promise of great beauty in the face, which a year
ago had only been remarkable for the fineness of the eyes. Her
complexion was clear now, although colourless--twelve months ago he
would have called it sallow--her delicate cheek was smooth as marble,
her teeth were even and white, and her rare smiles called out a
lovely dimple.
She met her former friend and lecturer with a grave shyness, for she
remembered well how they had parted, and thought he could hardly have
forgiven, much less forgotten, her passionate flinging away from him.
But the truth was, after the first few hours of offended displeasure,
he had ceased to think of it at all. She, poor child, by way of
proving her repentance, had tried hard to reform her boisterous tom-
boy manners, in order to show him that, although she would not give
up her dear old friend Dixon, at his or anyone's bidding, she would
strive to profit by his lectures in all things reasonable. The
consequence was, that she suddenly appeared to him as an elegant
dignified young lady, instead of the rough little girl he remembered.
Still below her somewhat formal manners there lurked the old wild
spirit, as he could plainly see after a little more watching; and he
began to wish to call this out, and to strive, by reminding her of
old days, and all her childish frolics, to flavour her subdued
manners and speech with a little of the former originality.
In this he succeeded. No one, neither Mr. Wilkins, nor Miss Monro,
nor Mr. Ness, saw what this young couple were about--they did not
know it themselves; but before the summer was over they were
desperately in love with each other, or perhaps I should rather say,
Ellinor was desperately in love with him--he, as passionately as he
could be with anyone; but in him the intellect was superior in
strength to either affections or passions.
The causes of the blindness of those around them were these: Mr.
Wilkins still considered Ellinor as a little girl, as his own pet,
his darling, but nothing more. Miss Monro was anxious about her own
improvement. Mr. Ness was deep in a new edition of "Horace," which
he was going to bring out with notes. I believe Dixon would have
been keener sighted, but Ellinor kept Mr. Corbet and Dixon apart for
obvious reasons--they were each her dear friends, but she knew that
Mr. Corbet did not like Dixon, and suspected that the feeling was
mutual.
The only change of circumstances between this year and the previous
one consisted in this development of attachment between the young
people. Otherwise, everything went on apparently as usual. With
Ellinor the course of the day was something like this: up early and
into the garden until breakfast time, when she made tea for her
father and Miss Monro in the dining-room, always taking care to lay a
little nosegay of freshly-gathered flowers by her father's plate.
After breakfast, when the conversation had been on general and
indifferent subjects, Mr. Wilkins withdrew into the little study so
often mentioned. It opened out of a passage that ran between the
dining-room and the kitchen, on the left hand of the hall.
Corresponding to the dining-room on the other side of the hall was
the drawing-room, with its side-window serving as a door into a
conservatory, and this again opened into the library. Old Mr.
Wilkins had added a semicircular projection to the library, which was
lighted by a dome above, and showed off his son's Italian purchases
of sculpture. The library was by far the most striking and agreeable
room in the house; and the consequence was that the drawing-room was
seldom used, and had the aspect of cold discomfort common to
apartments rarely occupied. Mr. Wilkins's study, on the other side
of the house, was also an afterthought, built only a few years ago,
and projecting from the regularity of the outside wall; a little
stone passage led to it from the hall, small, narrow, and dark, and
out of which no other door opened.
The study itself was a hexagon, one side window, one fireplace, and
the remaining four sides occupied with doors, two of which have been
already mentioned, another at the foot of the narrow winding stairs
which led straight into Mr. Wilkins's bedroom over the dining-room,
and the fourth opening into a path through the shrubbery to the right
of the flower-garden as you looked from the house. This path led
through the stable-yard, and then by a short cut right into Hamley,
and brought you out close to Mr. Wilkins's office; it was by this way
he always went and returned to his business. He used the study for a
smoking and lounging room principally, although he always spoke of it
as a convenient place for holding confidential communications with
such of his clients as did not like discussing their business within
the possible hearing of all the clerks in his office. By the outer
door he could also pass to the stables, and see that proper care was
taken at all times of his favourite and valuable horses. Into this
study Ellinor would follow him of a morning, helping him on with his
great-coat, mending his gloves, talking an infinite deal of merry
fond nothing; and then, clinging to his arm, she would accompany him
in his visits to the stables, going up to the shyest horses, and
petting them, and patting them, and feeding them with bread all the
time that her father held converse with Dixon. When he was finally
gone--and sometimes it was a long time first--she returned to the
schoolroom to Miss Monro, and tried to set herself hard at work on
her lessons. But she had not much time for steady application; if
her father had cared for her progress in anything, she would and
could have worked hard at that study or accomplishment; but Mr.
Wilkins, the ease and pleasure loving man, did not wish to make
himself into the pedagogue, as he would have considered it, if he had
ever questioned Ellinor with a real steady purpose of ascertaining
her intellectual progress. It was quite enough for him that her
general intelligence and variety of desultory and miscellaneous
reading made her a pleasant and agreeable companion for his hours of
relaxation.
At twelve o'clock, Ellinor put away her books with joyful eagerness,
kissed Miss Monro, asked her if they should go a regular walk, and
was always rather thankful when it was decided that it would be
better to stroll in the garden--a decision very often come to, for
Miss Monro hated fatigue, hated dirt, hated scrambling, and dreaded
rain; all of which are evils, the chances of which are never far
distant from country walks. So Ellinor danced out into the garden,
worked away among her flowers, played at the old games among the
roots of the trees, and, when she could, seduced Dixon into the
flower-garden to have a little consultation as to the horses and
dogs. For it was one of her father's few strict rules that Ellinor
was never to go into the stable-yard unless he were with her; so
these tete-a-tetes with Dixon were always held in the flower-garden,
or bit of forest ground surrounding it. Miss Monro sat and basked in
the sun, close to the dial, which made the centre of the gay flower-
beds, upon which the dining-room and study windows looked.
At one o'clock, Ellinor and Miss Monro dined. An hour was allowed
for Miss Monro's digestion, which Ellinor again spent out of doors,
and at three, lessons began again and lasted till five. At that time
they went to dress preparatory for the schoolroom tea at half-past
five. After tea Ellinor tried to prepare her lessons for the next
day; but all the time she was listening for her father's footstep--
the moment she heard that, she dashed down her book, and flew out of
the room to welcome and kiss him. Seven was his dinner-hour; he
hardly ever dined alone; indeed, he often dined from home four days
out of seven, and when he had no engagement to take him out he liked
to have some one to keep him company: Mr. Ness very often, Mr.
Corbet along with him if he was in Hamley, a stranger friend, or one
of his clients. Sometimes, reluctantly, and when he fancied he could
not avoid the attention without giving offence, Mr. Wilkins would ask
Mr. Dunster, and then the two would always follow Ellinor into the
library at a very early hour, as if their subjects for tete-a-tete
conversation were quite exhausted. With all his other visitors, Mr.
Wilkins sat long--yes, and yearly longer; with Mr. Ness, because they
became interested in each other's conversation; with some of the
others, because the wine was good, and the host hated to spare it.
Mr. Corbet used to leave his tutor and Mr. Wilkins and saunter into
the library. There sat Ellinor and Miss Monro, each busy with their
embroidery. He would bring a stool to Ellinor's side, question and
tease her, interest her, and they would become entirely absorbed in
each other, Miss Monro's sense of propriety being entirely set at
rest by the consideration that Mr. Wilkins must know what he was
about in allowing a young man to become thus intimate with his
daughter, who, after all, was but a child.
Mr. Corbet had lately fallen into the habit of walking up to Ford
Bank for The Times every day, near twelve o'clock, and lounging about
in the garden until one; not exactly with either Ellinor or Miss
Monro, but certainly far more at the beck and call of the one than of
the other.
Miss Monro used to think he would have been glad to stay and lunch at
their early dinner, but she never gave the invitation, and he could
not well stay without her expressed sanction. He told Ellinor all
about his mother and sisters, and their ways of going on, and spoke
of them and of his father as of people she was one day certain to
know, and to know intimately; and she did not question or doubt this
view of things; she simply acquiesced.
He had some discussion with himself as to whether he should speak to
her, and so secure her promise to be his before returning to
Cambridge or not. He did not like the formality of an application to
Mr. Wilkins, which would, after all, have been the proper and
straightforward course to pursue with a girl of her age--she was
barely sixteen. Not that he anticipated any difficulty on Mr.
Wilkins's part; his approval of the intimacy which at their
respective ages was pretty sure to lead to an attachment, was made as
evident as could be by actions without words. But there would have
to be reference to his own father, who had no notion of the whole
affair, and would be sure to treat it as a boyish fancy; as if at
twenty-one Ralph was not a man, as clear and deliberative in knowing
his own mind, as resolute as he ever would be in deciding upon the
course of exertion that should lead him to independence and fame, if
such were to be attained by clear intellect and a strong will.
No; to Mr. Wilkins he would not speak for another year or two.
But should he tell Ellinor in direct terms of his love--his intention
to marry her?
Again he inclined to the more prudent course of silence. He was not
afraid of any change in his own inclinations: of them he was sure.
But he looked upon it in this way: If he made a regular declaration
to her she would be bound to tell it to her father. He should not
respect her or like her so much if she did not. And yet this course
would lead to all the conversations, and discussions, and references
to his own father, which made his own direct appeal to Mr. Wilkins
appear a premature step to him.
Whereas he was as sure of Ellinor's love for him as if she had
uttered all the vows that women ever spoke; he knew even better than
she did how fully and entirely that innocent girlish heart was his
own. He was too proud to dread her inconstancy for an instant;
"besides," as he went on to himself, as if to make assurance doubly
sure, "whom does she see? Those stupid Holsters, who ought to be
only too proud of having such a girl for their cousin, ignore her
existence, and spoke slightingly of her father only the very last
time I dined there. The country people in this precisely Boeotian --
shire clutch at me because my father goes up to the Plantagenets for
his pedigree--not one whit for myself--and neglect Ellinor; and only
condescend to her father because old Wilkins was nobody-knows-who's
son. So much the worse for them, but so much the better for me in
this case. I'm above their silly antiquated prejudices, and shall be
only too glad when the fitting time comes to make Ellinor my wife.
After all, a prosperous attorney's daughter may not be considered an
unsuitable match for me--younger son as I am. Ellinor will make a
glorious woman three or four years hence; just the style my father
admires--such a figure, such limbs. I'll be patient, and bide my
time, and watch my opportunities, and all will come right."
So he bade Ellinor farewell in a most reluctant and affectionate
manner, although his words might have been spoken out in Hamley
market-place, and were little different from what he said to Miss
Monro. Mr. Wilkins half expected a disclosure to himself of the love
which he suspected in the young man; and when that did not come, he
prepared himself for a confidence from Ellinor. But she had nothing
to tell him, as he very well perceived from the child's open
unembarrassed manner when they were left alone together after dinner.
He had refused an invitation, and shaken off Mr. Ness, in order to
have this confidential tete-a-tete with his motherless girl; and
there was nothing to make confidence of. He was half inclined to be
angry; but then he saw that, although sad, she was so much at peace
with herself and with the world, that he, always an optimist, began
to think the young man had done wisely in not tearing open the
rosebud of her feelings too prematurely.
The next two years passed over in much the same way--or a careless
spectator might have thought so. I have heard people say, that if
you look at a regiment advancing with steady step over a plain on a
review-day, you can hardly tell that they are not merely marking time
on one spot of ground, unless you compare their position with some
other object by which to mark their progress, so even is the
repetition of the movement. And thus the sad events of the future
life of this father and daughter were hardly perceived in their
steady advance, and yet over the monotony and flat uniformity of
their days sorrow came marching down upon them like an armed man.
Long before Mr. Wilkins had recognised its shape, it was approaching
him in the distance--as, in fact, it is approaching all of us at this
very time; you, reader, I, writer, have each our great sorrow bearing
down upon us. It may be yet beyond the dimmest point of our horizon,
but in the stillness of the night our hearts shrink at the sound of
its coming footstep. Well is it for those who fall into the hands of
the Lord rather than into the hands of men; but worst of all is it
for him who has hereafter to mingle the gall of remorse with the cup
held out to him by his doom.
Mr. Wilkins took his ease and his pleasure yet more and more every
year of his life; nor did the quality of his ease and his pleasure
improve; it seldom does with self-indulgent people. He cared less
for any books that strained his faculties a little--less for
engravings and sculptures--perhaps more for pictures. He spent
extravagantly on his horses; "thought of eating and drinking." There
was no open vice in all this, so that any awful temptation to crime
should come down upon him, and startle him out of his mode of
thinking and living; half the people about him did much the same, as
far as their lives were patent to his unreflecting observation. But
most of his associates had their duties to do, and did them with a
heart and a will, in the hours when he was not in their company.
Yes! I call them duties, though some of them might be self-imposed
and purely social; they were engagements they had entered into,
either tacitly or with words, and that they fulfilled. From Mr.
Hetherington, the Master of the Hounds, who was up at--no one knows
what hour, to go down to the kennel and see that the men did their
work well and thoroughly, to stern old Sir Lionel Playfair, the
upright magistrate, the thoughtful, conscientious landlord--they did
their work according to their lights; there were few laggards among
those with whom Mr. Wilkins associated in the field or at the dinner-
table. Mr. Ness--though as a clergyman he was not so active as he
might have been--yet even Mr. Ness fagged away with his pupils and
his new edition of one of the classics. Only Mr. Wilkins,
dissatisfied with his position, neglected to fulfil the duties
thereof. He imitated the pleasures, and longed for the fancied
leisure of those about him; leisure that he imagined would be so much
more valuable in the hands of a man like himself, full of
intellectual tastes and accomplishments, than frittered away by dull
boors of untravelled, uncultivated squires--whose company, however,
be it said by the way, he never refused.
And yet daily Mr. Wilkins was sinking from the intellectually to the
sensually self-indulgent man. He lay late in bed, and hated Mr.
Dunster for his significant glance at the office-clock when he
announced to his master that such and such a client had been waiting
more than an hour to keep an appointment. "Why didn't you see him
yourself, Dunster? I'm sure you would have done quite as well as
me," Mr. Wilkins sometimes replied, partly with a view of saying
something pleasant to the man whom he disliked and feared. Mr.
Dunster always replied, in a meek matter-of-fact tone, "Oh, sir, they
wouldn't like to talk over their affairs with a subordinate."
And every time he said this, or some speech of the same kind, the
idea came more and more clearly into Mr. Wilkins's head, of how
pleasant it would be to himself to take Dunster into partnership, and
thus throw all the responsibility of the real work and drudgery upon
his clerk's shoulders. Importunate clients, who would make
appointments at unseasonable hours and would keep to them, might
confide in the partner, though they would not in the clerk. The
great objections to this course were, first and foremost, Mr.
Wilkins's strong dislike to Mr. Dunster--his repugnance to his
company, his dress, his voice, his ways--all of which irritated his
employer, till his state of feeling towards Dunster might be called
antipathy; next, Mr. Wilkins was fully aware of the fact that all Mr.
Dunster's actions and words were carefully and thoughtfully pre-
arranged to further the great unspoken desire of his life--that of
being made a partner where he now was only a servant. Mr. Wilkins
took a malicious pleasure in tantalizing Mr. Dunster by such speeches
as the one I have just mentioned, which always seemed like an opening
to the desired end, but still for a long time never led any further.
Yet all the while that end was becoming more and more certain, and at
last it was reached.
Mr. Dunster always suspected that the final push was given by some
circumstance from without; some reprimand for neglect--some threat of
withdrawal of business which his employer had received; but of this
he could not be certain; all he knew was, that Mr. Wilkins proposed
the partnership to him in about as ungracious a way as such an offer
could be made; an ungraciousness which, after all, had so little
effect on the real matter in hand, that Mr. Dunster could pass over
it with a private sneer, while taking all possible advantage of the
tangible benefit it was now in his power to accept.
Mr. Corbet's attachment to Ellinor had been formally disclosed to her
just before this time. He had left college, entered at the Middle
Temple, and was fagging away at law, and feeling success in his own
power; Ellinor was to "come out" at the next Hamley assemblies; and
her lover began to be jealous of the possible admirers her striking
appearance and piquant conversation might attract, and thought it a
good time to make the success of his suit certain by spoken words and
promises.
He needed not have alarmed himself even enough to make him take this
step, if he had been capable of understanding Ellinor's heart as
fully as he did her appearance and conversation. She never missed
the absence of formal words and promises. She considered herself as
fully engaged to him, as much pledged to marry him and no one else,
before he had asked the final question, as afterwards. She was
rather surprised at the necessity for those decisive words,
"Ellinor, dearest, will you--can you marry me?" and her reply was--
given with a deep blush I must record, and in a soft murmuring tone -
"Yes--oh, yes--I never thought of anything else."
"Then I may speak to your father, may not I, darling?"
"He knows; I am sure he knows; and he likes you so much. Oh, how
happy I am!"
"But still I must speak to him before I go. When can I see him, my
Ellinor? I must go back to town at four o'clock."
"I heard his voice in the stable-yard only just before you came. Let
me go and find out if he is gone to the office yet."
No! to be sure he was not gone. He was quietly smoking a cigar in
his study, sitting in an easy-chair near the open window, and
leisurely glancing at all the advertisements in The Times. He hated
going to the office more and more since Dunster had become a partner;
that fellow gave himself such airs of investigation and reprehension.
He got up, took the cigar out of his mouth, and placed a chair for
Mr. Corbet, knowing well why he had thus formally prefaced his
entrance into the room with a -
"Can I have a few minutes' conversation with you, Mr. Wilkins?"
"Certainly, my dear fellow. Sit down. Will you have a cigar?"
"No! I never smoke." Mr. Corbet despised all these kinds of
indulgences, and put a little severity into his refusal, but quite
unintentionally; for though he was thankful he was not as other men,
he was not at all the person to trouble himself unnecessarily with
their reformation.
"I want to speak to you about Ellinor. She says she thinks you must
be aware of our mutual attachment."
"Well," said Mr. Wilkins--he had resumed his cigar, partly to conceal
his agitation at what he knew was coming--"I believe I have had my
suspicions. It is not very long since I was young myself." And he
sighed over the recollection of Lettice, and his fresh, hopeful
youth.
"And I hope, sir, as you have been aware of it, and have never
manifested any disapprobation of it, that you will not refuse your
consent--a consent I now ask you for--to our marriage."
Mr. Wilkins did not speak for a little while--a touch, a thought, a
word more would have brought him to tears; for at the last he found
it hard to give the consent which would part him from his only child.
Suddenly he got up, and putting his hand into that of the anxious
lover (for his silence had rendered Mr. Corbet anxious up to a
certain point of perplexity--he could not understand the implied he
would and he would not), Mr. Wilkins said,
"Yes! God bless you both! I will give her to you, some day--only it
must be a long time first. And now go away--go back to her--for I
can't stand this much longer."
Mr. Corbet returned to Ellinor. Mr. Wilkins sat down and buried his
head in his hands, then went to his stable, and had Wildfire saddled
for a good gallop over the country. Mr. Dunster waited for him in
vain at the office, where an obstinate old country gentleman from a
distant part of the shire would ignore Dunster's existence as a
partner, and pertinaciously demanded to see Mr. Wilkins on important
business.

CHAPTER V.

A few days afterwards, Ellinor's father bethought himself that same

further communication ought to take place between him and his
daughter's lover regarding the approval of the family of the latter
to the young man's engagement, and he accordingly wrote a very
gentlemanly letter, saying that of course he trusted that Ralph had
informed his father of his engagement; that Mr. Corbet was well known
to Mr. Wilkins by reputation, holding the position which he did in
Shropshire, but that as Mr. Wilkins did not pretend to be in the same
station of life, Mr. Corbet might possibly never even have heard of
his name, although in his own county it was well known as having been
for generations that of the principal conveyancer and land-agent of -
-shire; that his wife had been a member of the old knightly family of
Holsters, and that he himself was descended from a younger branch of
the South Wales De Wintons, or Wilkins; that Ellinor, as his only
child, would naturally inherit all his property, but that in the
meantime, of course, some settlement upon her would he made, the
nature of which might be decided nearer the time of the marriage.
It was a very good straightforward letter and well fitted for the
purpose to which Mr. Wilkins knew it would be applied--of being
forwarded to the young man's father. One would have thought that it
was not an engagement so disproportionate in point of station as to
cause any great opposition on that score; but, unluckily, Captain
Corbet, the heir and eldest son, had just formed a similar engagement
with Lady Maria Brabant, the daughter of one of the proudest earls in
--shire, who had always resented Mr. Wilkins's appearance on the
field as an insult to the county, and ignored his presence at every
dinner-table where they met. Lady Maria was visiting the Corbets at
the very time when Ralph's letter, enclosing Mr. Wilkins's, reached
the paternal halls, and she merely repeated her father's opinions
when Mrs. Corbet and her daughters naturally questioned her as to who
these Wilkinses were; they remembered the name in Ralph's letters
formerly; the father was some friend of Mr. Ness's, the clergyman
with whom Ralph had read; they believed Ralph used to dine with these
Wilkinses sometimes, along with Mr. Ness.
Lady Maria was a goodnatured girl, and meant no harm in repeating her
father's words; touched up, it is true, by some of the dislike she
herself felt to the intimate alliance proposed, which would make her
sister-in-law to the daughter of an "upstart attorney," "not received
in the county," "always trying to push his way into the set above
him," "claiming connection with the De Wintons of -- Castle, who, as
she well knew, only laughed when he was spoken of, and said they were
more rich in relations than they were aware of"--"not people papa
would ever like her to know, whatever might be the family
connection."
These little speeches told in a way which the girl who uttered them
did not intend they should. Mrs. Corbet and her daughters set
themselves violently against this foolish entanglement of Ralph's;
they would not call it an engagement. They argued, and they urged,
and they pleaded, till the squire, anxious for peace at any price,
and always more under the sway of the people who were with him,
however unreasonable they might be, than of the absent, even though
these had the wisdom of Solomon or the prudence and sagacity of his
son Ralph, wrote an angry letter, saying that, as Ralph was of age,
of course he had a right to please himself, therefore all his father
could say was, that the engagement was not at all what either he or
Ralph's mother had expected or hoped; that it was a degradation to
the family just going to ally themselves with a peer of James the
First's creation; that of course Ralph must do what he liked, but
that if he married this girl he must never expect to have her
received by the Corbets of Corbet Hall as a daughter. The squire was
rather satisfied with his production, and took it to show it to his
wife; but she did not think it was strong enough, and added a little
postscript

"DEAR RALPH,
"Though, as second son, you are entitled to Bromley at my death, yet
I can do much to make the estate worthless. Hitherto, regard for you
has prevented my taking steps as to sale of timber, &c., which would
materially increase your sisters' portions; this just measure I shall
infallibly take if I find you persevere in keeping to this silly
engagement. Your father's disapproval is always a sufficient reason
to allege."

Ralph was annoyed at the receipt of these letters, though he only

smiled as he locked them up in his desk.
"Dear old father! how he blusters! As to my mother, she is
reasonable when I talk to her. Once give her a definite idea of what
Ellinor's fortune will be, and let her, if she chooses, cut down her
timber--a threat she has held over me ever since I knew what a
rocking-horse was, and which I have known to be illegal these ten
years past--and she'll come round. I know better than they do how
Reginald has run up post-obits, and as for that vulgar high-born Lady
Maria they are all so full of, why, she is a Flanders mare to my
Ellinor, and has not a silver penny to cross herself with, besides!
I bide my time, you dear good people!"
He did not think it necessary to reply to these letters immediately,
nor did he even allude to their contents in his to Ellinor. Mr.
Wilkins, who had been very well satisfied with his own letter to the
young man, and had thought that it must be equally agreeable to every
one, was not at all suspicious of any disapproval, because the fact
of a distinct sanction on the part of Mr. Ralph Corbet's friends to
his engagement was not communicated to him.
As for Ellinor, she trembled all over with happiness. Such a summer
for the blossoming of flowers and ripening of fruit had not been
known for years; it seemed to her as if bountiful loving Nature
wanted to fill the cup of Ellinor's joy to overflowing, and as if
everything, animate and inanimate, sympathised with her happiness.
Her father was well, and apparently content. Miss Monro was very
kind. Dixon's lameness was quite gone off. Only Mr. Dunster came
creeping about the house, on pretence of business, seeking out her
father, and disturbing all his leisure with his dust-coloured
parchment-skinned careworn face, and seeming to disturb the smooth
current of her daily life whenever she saw him.
Ellinor made her appearance at the Hamley assemblies, but with less
eclat than either her father or her lover expected. Her beauty and
natural grace were admired by those who could discriminate; but to
the greater number there was (what they called) "a want of style"--
want of elegance there certainly was not, for her figure was perfect,
and though she moved shyly, she moved well. Perhaps it was not a
good place for a correct appreciation of Miss Wilkins; some of the
old dowagers thought it a piece of presumption in her to be there at
all--but the Lady Holster of the day (who remembered her husband's
quarrel with Mr. Wilkins, and looked away whenever Ellinor came near)
resented this opinion. "Miss Wilkins is descended from Sir Frank's
family, one of the oldest in the county; the objection might have
been made years ago to the father, but as he had been received, she
did not know why Miss Wilkins was to be alluded to as out of her
place." Ellinor's greatest enjoyment in the evening was to hear her
father say, after all was over, and they were driving home -
"Well, I thought my Nelly the prettiest girl there, and I think I
know some other people who would have said the same if they could
have spoken out."
"Thank you, papa," said Ellinor, squeezing his hand, which she held.
She thought he alluded to the absent Ralph as the person who would
have agreed with him, had he had the opportunity of seeing her; but
no, he seldom thought much of the absent; but had been rather
flattered by seeing Lord Hildebrand take up his glass for the
apparent purpose of watching Ellinor.
"Your pearls, too, were as handsome as any in the room, child--but we
must have them re-set; the sprays are old-fashioned now. Let me have
them to-morrow to send up to Hancock."
"Papa, please, I had rather keep them as they are--as mamma wore
them."
He was touched in a minute.
"Very well, darling. God bless you for thinking of it!"
But he ordered her a set of sapphires instead, for the next assembly.
These balls were not such as to intoxicate Ellinor with success, and
make her in love with gaiety. Large parties came from the different
country-houses in the neighbourhood, and danced with each other.
When they had exhausted the resources they brought with them, they
had generally a few dances to spare for friends of the same standing
with whom they were most intimate. Ellinor came with her father, and
joined an old card-playing dowager, by way of a chaperone--the said
dowager being under old business obligations to the firm of Wilkins
and Son, and apologizing to all her acquaintances for her own weak
condescension to Mr. Wilkins's foible in wishing to introduce his
daughter into society above her natural sphere. It was upon this
lady, after she had uttered some such speech as the one I have just
mentioned, that Lady Holster had come down with the pedigree of
Ellinor's mother. But though the old dowager had drawn back a little
discomfited at my lady's reply, she was not more attentive to Ellinor
in consequence. She allowed Mr. Wilkins to bring in his daughter and
place her on the crimson sofa beside her; spoke to her occasionally
in the interval that elapsed before the rubbers could be properly
arranged in the card-room; invited the girl to accompany her to that
sober amusement, and on Ellinor's declining, and preferring to remain
with her father, the dowager left her with a sweet smile on her plump
countenance, and an approving conscience somewhere within her portly
frame, assuring her that she had done all that could possibly have
been expected from her towards "that good Wilkins's daughter."
Ellinor stood by her father watching the dances, and thankful for the
occasional chance of a dance. While she had been sitting by her
chaperone, Mr. Wilkins had made the tour of the room, dropping out
the little fact of his daughter's being present wherever he thought
the seed likely to bring forth the fruit of partners. And some came
because they liked Mr. Wilkins, and some asked Ellinor because they
had done their duty dances to their own party, and might please
themselves. So that she usually had an average of one invitation to
every three dances; and this principally towards the end of the
evening.
But considering her real beauty, and the care which her father always
took about her appearance, she met with far less than her due of
admiration. Admiration she did not care for; partners she did; and
sometimes felt mortified when she had to sit or stand quiet during
all the first part of the evening. If it had not been for her
father's wishes she would much rather have stayed at home; but,
nevertheless, she talked even to the irresponsive old dowager, and
fairly chatted to her father when she got beside him, because she did
not like him to fancy that she was not enjoying herself.
And, indeed, she had so much happiness in the daily course of this
part of her life, that, on looking back upon it afterwards, she could
not imagine anything brighter than it had been. The delight of
receiving her lover's letters--the anxious happiness of replying to
them (always a little bit fearful lest she should not express herself
and her love in the precisely happy medium becoming a maiden)--the
father's love and satisfaction in her--the calm prosperity of the
whole household--was delightful at the time, and, looking back upon
it, it was dreamlike.
Occasionally Mr. Corbet came down to see her. He always slept on
these occasions at Mr. Ness's; but he was at Ford Bank the greater
part of the one day between two nights that he allowed himself for
the length of his visits. And even these short peeps were not
frequently taken. He was working hard at law: fagging at it tooth
and nail; arranging his whole life so as best to promote the ends of
his ambition; feeling a delight in surpassing and mastering his
fellows--those who started in the race at the same time. He read
Ellinor's letters over and over again; nothing else beside law-books.
He perceived the repressed love hidden away in subdued expressions in
her communications, with an amused pleasure at the attempt at
concealment. He was glad that her gaieties were not more gay; he was
glad that she was not too much admired, although a little indignant
at the want of taste on the part of the --shire gentlemen. But if
other admirers had come prominently forward, he would have had to
take some more decided steps to assert his rights than he had
hitherto done; for he had caused Ellinor to express a wish to her
father that her engagement should not be too much talked about until
nearer the time when it would be prudent for him to marry her. He
thought that the knowledge of this, the only imprudently hasty step
he ever meant to take in his life, might go against his character for
wisdom, if the fact became known while he was as yet only a student.
Mr. Wilkins wondered a little; but acceded, as he always did, to any
of Ellinor's requests. Mr. Ness was a confidant, of course, and some
of Lady Maria's connections heard of it, and forgot it again very
soon; and, as it happened, no one else was sufficiently interested in
Ellinor to care to ascertain the fact.
All this time, Mr. Ralph Corbet maintained a very quietly decided
attitude towards his own family. He was engaged to Miss Wilkins; and
all he could say was, he felt sorry that they disapproved of it. He
was not able to marry just at present, and before the time for his
marriage arrived, he trusted that his family would take a more
reasonable view of things, and be willing to receive her as his wife
with all becoming respect or affection. This was the substance of
what he repeated in different forms in reply to his father's angry
letters. At length, his invariable determination made way with his
father; the paternal thunderings were subdued to a distant rumbling
in the sky; and presently the inquiry was broached as to how much
fortune Miss Wilkins would have; how much down on her marriage; what
were the eventual probabilities. Now this was a point which Mr.
Ralph Corbet himself wished to be informed upon. He had not thought
much about it in making the engagement; he had been too young, or too
much in love. But an only child of a wealthy attorney ought to have
something considerable; and an allowance so as to enable the young
couple to start housekeeping in a moderately good part of town, would
be an advantage to him in his profession. So he replied to his
father, adroitly suggesting that a letter containing certain
modifications of the inquiry which had been rather roughly put in Mr.
Corbet's last, should be sent to him, in order that he might himself
ascertain from Mr. Wilkins what were Ellinor's prospects as regarded
fortune.
The desired letter came; but not in such a form that he could pass it
on to Mr. Wilkins; he preferred to make quotations, and even these
quotations were a little altered and dressed before he sent them on.
The gist of his letter to Mr. Wilkins was this. He stated that he
hoped soon to be in a position to offer Ellinor a home; that he
anticipated a steady progress in his profession, and consequently in
his income; but that contingencies might arise, as his father
suggested, which would deprive him of the power of earning a
livelihood, perhaps when it might be more required than it would be
at first; that it was true that, after his mother's death a small
estate in Shropshire would come to him as second son, and of course
Ellinor would receive the benefit of this property, secured to her
legally as Mr. Wilkins thought best--that being a matter for after
discussion--but that at present his father was anxious, as might be
seen from the extract to ascertain whether Mr. Wilkins could secure
him from the contingency of having his son's widow and possible
children thrown upon his hands, by giving Ellinor a dowry; and if so,
it was gently insinuated, what would be the amount of the same.
When Mr. Wilkins received this letter it startled him out of a happy
day-dream. He liked Ralph Corbet and the whole connection quite well
enough to give his consent to an engagement; and sometimes even he
was glad to think that Ellinor's future was assured, and that she
would have a protector and friends after he was dead and gone. But
he did not want them to assume their responsibilities so soon. He
had not distinctly contemplated her marriage as an event likely to
happen before his death. He could not understand how his own life
would go on without her: or indeed why she and Ralph Corbet could
not continue just as they were at present. He came down to breakfast
with the letter in his hand. By Ellinor's blushes, as she glanced at
the handwriting, he knew that she had heard from her lover by the
same post; by her tender caresses--caresses given as if to make up
for the pain which the prospect of her leaving him was sure to cause
him--he was certain that she was aware of the contents of the letter.
Yet he put it in his pocket, and tried to forget it.
He did this not merely from his reluctance to complete any
arrangements which might facilitate Ellinor's marriage. There was a
further annoyance connected with the affair. His money matters had
been for some time in an involved state; he had been living beyond
his income, even reckoning that, as he always did, at the highest
point which it ever touched. He kept no regular accounts, reasoning
with himself--or, perhaps, I should rather say persuading himself--
that there was no great occasion for regular accounts, when he had a
steady income arising from his profession, as well as the interest of
a good sum of money left him by his father; and when, living in his
own house near a country town where provisions were cheap, his
expenditure for his small family--only one child--could never amount
to anything like his incomings from the above-mentioned sources. But
servants and horses, and choice wines and rare fruit-trees, and a
habit of purchasing any book or engraving that may take the fancy,
irrespective of the price, run away with money, even though there be
but one child. A year or two ago, Mr. Wilkins had been startled into
a system of exaggerated retrenchment--retrenchment which only lasted
about six weeks--by the sudden bursting of a bubble speculation in
which he had invested a part of his father's savings. But as soon as
the change in his habits, necessitated by his new economies, became
irksome, he had comforted himself for his relapse into his former
easy extravagance of living by remembering the fact that Ellinor was
engaged to the son of a man of large property: and that though Ralph
was only the second son, yet his mother's estate must come to him, as
Mr. Ness had already mentioned, on first hearing of her engagement.
Mr. Wilkins did not doubt that he could easily make Ellinor a fitting
allowance, or even pay down a requisite dowry; but the doing so would
involve an examination into the real state of his affairs, and this
involved distasteful trouble. He had no idea how much more than mere
temporary annoyance would arise out of the investigation. Until it
was made, he decided in his own mind that he would not speak to
Ellinor on the subject of her lover's letter. So for the next few
days she was kept in suspense, seeing little of her father; and
during the short times she was with him she was made aware that he
was nervously anxious to keep the conversation engaged on general
topics rather than on the one which she had at heart. As I have
already said, Mr. Corbet had written to her by the same post as that
on which he sent the letter to her father, telling her of its
contents, and begging her (in all those sweet words which lovers know
how to use) to urge her father to compliance for his sake--his, her
lover's--who was pining and lonely in all the crowds of London, since
her loved presence was not there. He did not care for money, save as
a means of hastening their marriage; indeed, if there were only some
income fixed, however small--some time for their marriage fixed,
however distant--he could be patient. He did not want superfluity of
wealth; his habits were simple, as she well knew; and money enough
would be theirs in time, both from her share of contingencies, and
the certainty of his finally possessing Bromley.
Ellinor delayed replying to this letter until her father should have
spoken to her on the subject. But as she perceived that he avoided
all such conversation, the young girl's heart failed her. She began
to blame herself for wishing to leave him, to reproach herself for
being accessory to any step which made him shun being alone with her,
and look distressed and full of care as he did now. It was the usual
struggle between father and lover for the possession of love, instead
of the natural and graceful resignation of the parent to the
prescribed course of things; and, as usual, it was the poor girl who
bore the suffering for no fault of her own: although she blamed
herself for being the cause of the disturbance in the previous order
of affairs. Ellinor had no one to speak to confidentially but her
father and her lover, and when they were at issue she could talk
openly to neither, so she brooded over Mr. Corbet's unanswered
letter, and her father's silence, and became pale and dispirited.
Once or twice she looked up suddenly, and caught her father's eye
gazing upon her with a certain wistful anxiety; but the instant she
saw this he pulled himself up, as it were, and would begin talking
gaily about the small topics of the day.
At length Mr. Corbet grew impatient at not hearing either from Mr.
Wilkins or Ellinor, and wrote urgently to the former, making known to
him a new proposal suggested to him by his father, which was, that a
certain sum should be paid down by Mr. Wilkins to be applied, under
the management of trustees, to the improvement of the Bromley estate,
out of the profits of which, or other sources in the elder Mr.
Corbet's hands, a heavy rate of interest should be paid on this
advance, which would secure an income to the young couple
immediately, and considerably increase the value of the estate upon
which Ellinor's settlement was to be made. The terms offered for
this laying down of ready money were so advantageous, that Mr.
Wilkins was strongly tempted to accede to them at once; as Ellinor's
pale cheek and want of appetite had only that very morning smote upon
his conscience, and this immediate transfer of ready money was as a
sacrifice, a soothing balm to his self-reproach, and laziness and
dislike to immediate unpleasantness of action had its
counterbalancing weakness in imprudence. Mr. Wilkins made some rough
calculations on a piece of paper--deeds, and all such tests of
accuracy, being down at the office; discovered that he could pay down
the sum required; wrote a letter agreeing to the proposal, and before
he sealed it called Ellinor into his study, and bade her read what he
had been writing and tell him what she thought of it. He watched the
colour come rushing into her white face, her lips quiver and tremble,
and even before the letter was ended she was in his arms kissing him,
and thanking him with blushing caresses rather than words.
"There, there!" said he, smiling and sighing; "that will do. Why, I
do believe you took me for a hard-hearted father, just like a
heroine's father in a book. You've looked as woe-begone this week
past as Ophelia. One can't make up one's mind in a day about such
sums of money as this, little woman; and you should have let your old
father have time to consider."
"Oh, papa; I was only afraid you were angry."
"Well, if I was a bit perplexed, seeing you look so ill and pining
was not the way to bring me round. Old Corbet, I must say, is trying
to make a good bargain for his son. It is well for me that I have
never been an extravagant man."
"But, papa, we don't want all this much."
"Yes, yes! it is all right. You shall go into their family as a
well-portioned girl, if you can't go as a Lady Maria. Come, don't
trouble your little head any more about it. Give me one more kiss,
and then we'll go and order the horses, and have a ride together, by
way of keeping holiday. I deserve a holiday, don't I, Nelly?"
Some country people at work at the roadside, as the father and
daughter passed along, stopped to admire their bright happy looks,
and one spoke of the hereditary handsomeness of the Wilkins family
(for the old man, the present Mr. Wilkins's father, had been fine-
looking in his drab breeches and gaiters, and usual assumption of a
yeoman's dress). Another said it was easy for the rich to be
handsome; they had always plenty to eat, and could ride when they
were tired of walking, and had no care for the morrow to keep them
from sleeping at nights. And, in sad acquiescence with their
contrasted lot, the men went on with their hedging and ditching in
silence.
And yet, if they had known--if the poor did know--the troubles and
temptations of the rich; if those men had foreseen the lot darkening
over the father, and including the daughter in its cloud; if Mr.
Wilkins himself had even imagined such a future possible . . . Well,
there was truth in the old heathen saying, "Let no man be envied till
his death."
Ellinor had no more rides with her father; no, not ever again; though
they had stopped that afternoon at the summit of a breezy common, and
looked at a ruined hall, not so very far off; and discussed whether
they could reach it that day, and decided that it was too far away
for anything but a hurried inspection, and that some day soon they
would make the old place into the principal object of an excursion.
But a rainy time came on, when no rides were possible; and whether it
was the influence of the weather, or some other care or trouble that
oppressed him, Mr. Wilkins seemed to lose all wish for much active
exercise, and rather sought a stimulus to his spirits and circulation
in wine. But of this Ellinor was innocently unaware. He seemed dull
and weary, and sat long, drowsing and drinking after dinner. If the
servants had not been so fond of him for much previous generosity and
kindness, they would have complained now, and with reason, of his
irritability, for all sorts of things seemed to annoy him.
"You should get the master to take a ride with you, miss," said
Dixon, one day as he was putting Ellinor on her horse. "He's not
looking well, he's studying too much at the office."
But when Ellinor named it to her father, he rather hastily replied
that it was all very well for women to ride out whenever they liked--
men had something else to do; and then, as he saw her look grave and
puzzled, he softened down his abrupt saying by adding that Dunster
had been making a fuss about his partner's non-attendance, and
altogether taking a good deal upon himself in a very offensive way,
so that he thought it better to go pretty regularly to the office, in
order to show him who was master--senior partner, and head of the
business, at any rate.
Ellinor sighed a little over her disappointment at her father's
preoccupation, and then forgot her own little regret in anger at Mr.
Dunster, who had seemed all along to be a thorn in her father's side,
and had latterly gained some power and authority over him, the
exercise of which, Ellinor could not help thinking, was a very
impertinent line of conduct from a junior partner, so lately only a
paid clerk, to his superior. There was a sense of something wrong in
the Ford Bank household for many weeks about this time. Mr. Wilkins
was not like himself, and his cheerful ways and careless genial
speeches were missed, even on the days when he was not irritable, and
evidently uneasy with himself and all about him. The spring was late
in coming, and cold rain and sleet made any kind of out-door exercise
a trouble and discomfort rather than a bright natural event in the
course of the day. All sound of winter gaieties, of assemblies and
meets, and jovial dinners, had died away, and the summer pleasures
were as yet unthought of. Still Ellinor had a secret perennial
source of sunshine in her heart; whenever she thought of Ralph she
could not feel much oppression from the present unspoken and
indistinct gloom. He loved her; and oh, how she loved him! and
perhaps this very next autumn--but that depended on his own success
in his profession. After all, if it was not this autumn it would be
the next; and with the letters that she received weekly, and the
occasional visits that her lover ran down to Hamley to pay Mr. Ness,
Ellinor felt as if she would almost prefer the delay of the time when
she must leave her father's for a husband's roof.

CHAPTER VI.

At Easter--just when the heavens and earth were looking their

dreariest, for Easter fell very early this year--Mr. Corbet came
down. Mr. Wilkins was too busy to see much of him; they were
together even less than usual, although not less friendly when they
did meet. But to Ellinor the visit was one of unmixed happiness.
Hitherto she had always had a little fear mingled up with her love of
Mr. Corbet; but his manners were softened, his opinions less decided
and abrupt, and his whole treatment of her showed such tenderness,
that the young girl basked and revelled in it. One or two of their
conversations had reference to their future married life in London;
and she then perceived, although it did not jar against her, that her
lover had not forgotten his ambition in his love. He tried to
inoculate her with something of his own craving for success in life;
but it was all in vain: she nestled to him, and told him she did not
care to be the Lord Chancellor's wife--wigs and wool-sacks were not
in her line; only if he wished it, she would wish it.
The last two days of his stay the weather changed. Sudden heat burst
forth, as it does occasionally for a few hours even in our chilly
English spring. The grey-brown bushes and trees started almost with
visible progress into the tender green shade which is the forerunner
of the bursting leaves. The sky was of full cloudless blue. Mr.
Wilkins was to come home pretty early from the office to ride out
with his daughter and her lover; but, after waiting some time for
him, it grew too late, and they were obliged to give up the project.
Nothing would serve Ellinor, then, but that she must carry out a
table and have tea in the garden, on the sunny side of the tree,
among the roots of which she used to play when a child. Miss Monro
objected a little to this caprice of Ellinor's, saying that it was
too early for out-of-door meals; but Mr. Corbet overruled all
objections, and helped her in her gay preparations. She always kept
to the early hours of her childhood, although she, as then, regularly
sat with her father at his late dinner; and this meal al fresco was
to be a reality to her and Miss Monro. There was a place arranged
for her father, and she seized upon him as he was coming from the
stable-yard, by the shrubbery path, to his study, and with merry
playfulness made him a prisoner, accusing him of disappointing them
of their ride, and drawing him more than half unwilling, to his chair
by the table. But he was silent, and almost sad: his presence
damped them all; they could hardly tell why, for he did not object to
anything, though he seemed to enjoy nothing, and only to force a
smile at Ellinor's occasional sallies. These became more and more
rare as she perceived her father's depression. She watched him
anxiously. He perceived it, and said--shivering in that strange
unaccountable manner which is popularly explained by the expression
that some one is passing over the earth that will one day form your
grave--"Ellinor! this is not a day for out-of-door tea. I never felt
so chilly a spot in my life. I cannot keep from shaking where I sit.
I must leave this place, my dear, in spite of all your good tea."
"Oh, papa! I am so sorry. But look how full that hot sun's rays
come on this turf. I thought I had chosen such a capital spot!"
But he got up and persisted in leaving the table, although he was
evidently sorry to spoil the little party. He walked up and down the
gravel walk, close by them, talking to them as he kept passing by and
trying to cheer them up.
"Are you warmer now, papa?" asked Ellinor.
"Oh, yes! All right. It's only that place that seems so chilly and
damp. I'm as warm as a toast now."
The next morning Mr. Corbet left them. The unseasonably fine weather
passed away too, and all things went back to their rather grey and
dreary aspect; but Ellinor was too happy to feel this much, knowing
what absent love existed for her alone, and from this knowledge
unconsciously trusting in the sun behind the clouds.
I have said that few or none in the immediate neighbourhood of
Hamley, beside their own household and Mr. Ness, knew of Ellinor's
engagement. At one of the rare dinner-parties to which she
accompanied her father--it was at the old lady's house who chaperoned
her to the assemblies--she was taken in to dinner by a young
clergyman staying in the neighbourhood. He had just had a small
living given to him in his own county, and he felt as if this was a
great step in his life. He was good, innocent, and rather boyish in
appearance. Ellinor was happy and at her ease, and chatted away to
this Mr. Livingstone on many little points of interest which they
found they had in common: church music, and the difficulty they had
in getting people to sing in parts; Salisbury Cathedral, which they
had both seen; styles of church architecture, Ruskin's works, and
parish schools, in which Mr. Livingstone was somewhat shocked to find
that Ellinor took no great interest. When the gentleman came in from
the dining-room, it struck Ellinor, for the first time in her life,
that her father had taken more wine than was good for him. Indeed,
this had rather become a habit with him of late; but as he always
tried to go quietly off to his own room when such had been the case,
his daughter had never been aware of it before, and the perception of
it now made her cheeks hot with shame. She thought that everyone
must be as conscious of his altered manner and way of speaking as she
was, and after a pause of sick silence, during which she could not
say a word, she set to and talked to Mr. Livingstone about parish
schools, anything, with redoubled vigour and apparent interest, in
order to keep one or two of the company, at least, from noticing what
was to her so painfully obvious.
The effect of her behaviour was far more than she had intended. She
kept Mr. Livingstone, it is true, from observing her father, but she
also riveted his attention on herself. He had thought her very
pretty and agreeable during dinner: but after dinner he considered
her bewitching, irresistible. He dreamed of her all night, and
wakened up the next morning to a calculation of how far his income
would allow him to furnish his pretty new parsonage with that
crowning blessing, a wife. For a day or two he did up little sums,
and sighed, and thought of Ellinor, her face listening with admiring
interest to his sermons, her arm passed into his as they went
together round the parish; her sweet voice instructing classes in his
schools--turn where he would, in his imagination Ellinor's presence
rose up before him.
The consequence was that he wrote an offer, which he found a far more
perplexing piece of composition than a sermon; a real hearty
expression of love, going on, over all obstacles, to a
straightforward explanation of his present prospects and future
hopes, and winding up with the information that on the succeeding
morning he would call to know whether he might speak to Mr. Wilkins
on the subject of this letter. It was given to Ellinor in the
evening, as she was sitting with Miss Monro in the library. Mr.
Wilkins was dining out, she hardly knew where, as it was a sudden
engagement, of which he had sent word from the office--a gentleman's
dinner-party, she supposed, as he had dressed in Hamley without
coming home. Ellinor turned over the letter when it was brought to
her, as some people do when they cannot recognise the handwriting, as
if to discover from paper or seal what two moments would assure them
of, if they opened the letter and looked at the signature. Ellinor
could not guess who had written it by any outward sign; but the
moment she saw the name "Herbert Livingstone," the meaning of the
letter flashed upon her and she coloured all over. She put the
letter away, unread, for a few minutes, and then made some excuse for
leaving the room and going upstairs. When safe in her bed-chamber,
she read the young man's eager words with a sense of self-reproach.
How must she, engaged to one man, have been behaving to another, if
this was the result of a single evening's interview? The self-
reproach was unjustly bestowed; but with that we have nothing to do.
She made herself very miserable; and at last went down with a heavy
heart to go on with Dante, and rummage up words in the dictionary.
All the time she seemed to Miss Monro to be plodding on with her
Italian more diligently and sedately than usual, she was planning in
her own mind to speak to her father as soon as he returned (and he
had said that he should not be late), and beg him to undo the
mischief she had done by seeing Mr. Livingstone the next morning, and
frankly explaining the real state of affairs to him. But she wanted
to read her letter again, and think it all over in peace; and so, at
an early hour, she wished Miss Monro good-night, and went up into her
own room above the drawing-room, and overlooking the flower-garden
and shrubbery-path to the stable-yard, by which her father was sure
to return. She went upstairs and studied her letter well, and tried
to recall all her speeches and conduct on that miserable evening--as
she thought it then--not knowing what true misery was. Her head
ached, and she put out the candle, and went and sat on the window-
seat, looking out into the moonlit garden, watching for her father.
She opened the window; partly to cool her forehead, partly to enable
her to call down softly when she should see him coming along. By-
and-by the door from the stable-yard into the shrubbery clicked and
opened, and in a moment she saw Mr. Wilkins moving through the
bushes; but not alone, Mr. Dunster was with him, and the two were
talking together in rather excited tones, immediately lost to
hearing, however, as they entered Mr. Wilkins's study by the outer
door.
"They have been dining together somewhere. Probably at Mr.
Hanbury's" (the Hamley brewer), thought Ellinor. "But how provoking
that he should have come home with papa this night of all nights!"
Two or three times before Mr. Dunster had called on Mr. Wilkins in
the evening, as Ellinor knew; but she was not quite aware of the
reason for such late visits, and had never put together the two
facts--(as cause and consequence)--that on such occasions her father
had been absent from the office all day, and that there might be
necessary business for him to transact, the urgency of which was the
motive for Mr. Dunster's visits. Mr. Wilkins always seemed to be
annoyed by his coming at so late an hour, and spoke of it, resenting
the intrusion upon his leisure; and Ellinor, without consideration,
adopted her father's mode of speaking and thinking on the subject,
and was rather more angry than he was whenever the obnoxious partner
came on business in the evening. This night was, of all nights, the
most ill-purposed time (so Ellinor thought) for a tete-a-tete with
her father! However, there was no doubt in her mind as to what she
had to do. So late as it was, the unwelcome visitor could not stop
long; and then she would go down and have her little confidence with
her father, and beg him to see Mr. Livingstone when he came next
morning, and dismiss him as gently as might be.
She sat on in the window-seat; dreaming waking dreams of future
happiness. She kept losing herself in such thoughts, and became
almost afraid of forgetting why she sat there. Presently she felt
cold, and got up to fetch a shawl, in which she muffled herself and
resumed her place. It seemed to her growing very late; the moonlight
was coming fuller and fuller into the garden and the blackness of the
shadow was more concentrated and stronger. Surely Mr. Dunster could
not have gone away along the dark shrubbery-path so noiselessly but
what she must have heard him? No! there was the swell of voices
coming up through the window from her father's study: angry voices
they were; and her anger rose sympathetically, as she knew that her
father was being irritated. There was a sudden movement, as of
chairs pushed hastily aside, and then a mysterious unaccountable
noise--heavy, sudden; and then a slight movement as of chairs again;
and then a profound stillness. Ellinor leaned her head against the
side of the window to listen more intently, for some mysterious
instinct made her sick and faint. No sound--no noise. Only by-and-
by she heard, what we have all heard at such times of intent
listening, the beating of the pulses of her heart, and then the
whirling rush of blood through her head. How long did this last?
She never knew. By-and-by she heard her father's hurried footstep in
his bedroom, next to hers; but when she ran thither to speak to him,
and ask him what was amiss--if anything had been--if she might come
to him now about Mr. Livingstone's letter, she found that he had gone
down again to his study, and almost at the same moment she heard the
little private outer door of that room open; some one went out, and
then there were hurried footsteps along the shrubbery-path. She
thought, of course, that it was Mr. Dunster leaving the house; and
went back for Mr. Livingstone's letter. Having found it, she passed
through her father's room to the private staircase, thinking that if
she went by the more regular way, she would have run the risk of
disturbing Miss Monro, and perhaps of being questioned in the
morning. Even in passing down this remote staircase, she trod softly
for fear of being overheard. When she entered the room, the full
light of the candles dazzled her for an instant, coming out of the
darkness. They were flaring wildly in the draught that came in
through the open door, by which the outer air was admitted; for a
moment there seemed no one in the room, and then she saw, with
strange sick horror, the legs of some one lying on the carpet behind
the table. As if compelled, even while she shrank from doing it, she
went round to see who it was that lay there, so still and motionless
as never to stir at her sudden coming. It was Mr. Dunster; his head
propped on chair-cushions, his eyes open, staring, distended. There
was a strong smell of brandy and hartshorn in the room; a smell so
powerful as not to be neutralized by the free current of night air
that blew through the two open doors. Ellinor could not have told
whether it was reason or instinct that made her act as she did during
this awful night. In thinking of it afterwards, with shuddering
avoidance of the haunting memory that would come and overshadow her
during many, many years of her life, she grew to believe that the
powerful smell of the spilt brandy absolutely intoxicated her--an
unconscious Rechabite in practice. But something gave her a presence
of mind and a courage not her own. And though she learnt to think
afterwards that she had acted unwisely, if not wrongly and wickedly,
yet she marvelled, in recalling that time, how she could have then
behaved as she did. First of all she lifted herself up from her
fascinated gaze at the dead man, and went to the staircase door, by
which she had entered the study, and shut it softly. Then she went
back--looked again; took the brandy-bottle, and knelt down, and tried
to pour some into the mouth; but this she found she could not do.
Then she wetted her handkerchief with the spirit, and moistened the
lips; all to no purpose; for, as I have said before, the man was
dead--killed by rupture of a vessel of the brain; how occasioned I
must tell by-and-by. Of course, all Ellinor's little cares and
efforts produced no effect; her father had tried them before--vain
endeavours all, to bring back the precious breath of life! The poor
girl could not bear the look of those open eyes, and softly,
tenderly, tried to close them, although unconscious that in so doing
she was rendering the pious offices of some beloved hand to a dead
man. She was sitting by the body on the floor when she heard steps
coming with rushing and yet cautious tread, through the shrubbery;
she had no fear, although it might be the tread of robbers and
murderers. The awfulness of the hour raised her above common fears;
though she did not go through the usual process of reasoning, and by
it feel assured that the feet which were coming so softly and swiftly
along were the same which she had heard leaving the room in like
manner only a quarter of an hour before.
Her father entered, and started back, almost upsetting some one
behind him by his recoil, on seeing his daughter in her motionless
attitude by the dead man.
"My God, Ellinor! what has brought you here?" he said, almost
fiercely.
But she answered as one stupefied, "I don't know. Is he dead?"
"Hush, hush, child; it cannot be helped."
She raised her eyes to the solemn, pitying, awe-stricken face behind
her father's--the countenance of Dixon.
"Is he dead?" she asked of him.
The man stepped forwards, respectfully pushing his master on one side
as he did so. He bent down over the corpse, and looked, and listened
and then reaching a candle off the table, he signed Mr. Wilkins to
close the door. And Mr. Wilkins obeyed, and looked with an intensity
of eagerness almost amounting to faintness on the experiment, and yet
he could not hope. The flame was steady--steady and pitilessly
unstirred, even when it was adjusted close to mouth and nostril; the
head was raised up by one of Dixon's stalwart arms, while he held the
candle in the other hand. Ellinor fancied that there was some
trembling on Dixon's part, and grasped his wrist tightly in order to
give it the requisite motionless firmness.
All in vain. The head was placed again on the cushions, the servant
rose and stood by his master, looked sadly on the dead man, whom,
living, none of them had liked or cared for, and Ellinor sat on,
quiet and tearless, as one in a trance.
"How was it, father?" at length she asked.
He would fain have had her ignorant of all, but so questioned by her
lips, so adjured by her eyes in the very presence of death, he could
not choose but speak the truth; he spoke it in convulsive gasps, each
sentence an effort:
"He taunted me--he was insolent, beyond my patience--I could not bear
it. I struck him--I can't tell how it was. He must have hit his
head in falling. Oh, my God! one little hour a go I was innocent of
this man's blood!" He covered his face with his hands.
Ellinor took the candle again; kneeling behind Mr. Dunster's head,
she tried the futile experiment once more.
"Could not a doctor do some good?" she asked of Dixon, in a hopeless
voice.
"No!" said he, shaking his head, and looking with a sidelong glance
at his master, who seemed to shrivel up and to shrink away at the
bare suggestion. "Doctors can do nought, I'm afeard. All that a
doctor could do, I take it, would be to open a vein, and that I could
do along with the best of them, if I had but my fleam here." He
fumbled in his pockets as he spoke, and, as chance would it, the
"fleam" (or cattle lancet) was somewhere about his dress. He drew it
out, smoothed and tried it on his finger. Ellinor tried to bare the
arm, but turned sick as she did so. Her father started eagerly
forwards, and did what was necessary with hurried trembling hands.
If they had cared less about the result, they might have been more
afraid of the consequences of the operation in the hands of one so
ignorant as Dixon. But, vein or artery, it signified little; no
living blood gushed out; only a little watery moisture followed the
cut of the fleam. They laid him back on his strange sad death-couch.
Dixon spoke next.
"Master Ned!" said he--for he had known Mr. Wilkins in his days of
bright careless boyhood, and almost was carried back to them by the
sense of charge and protection which the servant's presence of mind
and sharpened senses gave him over his master on this dreary night--
"Master Ned! we must do summut."
No one spoke. What was to be done?
"Did any folk see him come here?" Dixon asked, after a time. Ellinor
looked up to hear her father's answer, a wild hope coming into her
mind that all might be concealed somehow; she did not know how, nor
did she think of any consequences except saving her father from the
vague dread, trouble, and punishment that she was aware would await
him if all were known.
Mr. Wilkins did not seem to hear; in fact, he did not hear anything
but the unspoken echo of his own last words, that went booming
through his heart: "An hour ago I was innocent of this man's blood!
Only an hour ago!"
Dixon got up and poured out half a tumblerful of raw spirit from the
brandy-bottle that stood on the table.
"Drink this, Master Ned!" putting it to his master's lips. "Nay"--to
Ellinor--"it will do him no harm; only bring back his senses, which,
poor gentleman, are scared away. We shall need all our wits. Now,
sir, please answer my question. Did anyone see Measter Dunster come
here?"
"I don't know," said Mr. Wilkins, recovering his speech. "It all
seems in a mist. He offered to walk home with me; I did not want
him. I was almost rude to him to keep him off. I did not want to
talk of business; I had taken too much wine to be very clear and some
things at the office were not quite in order, and he had found it
out. If anyone heard our conversation, they must know I did not want
him to come with me. Oh! why would he come? He was as obstinate--he
would come--and here it has been his death!"
"Well, sir, what's done can't be undone, and I'm sure we'd any of us
bring him back to life if we could, even by cutting off our hands,
though he was a mighty plaguey chap while he'd breath in him. But
what I'm thinking is this: it'll maybe go awkward with you, sir, if
he's found here. One can't say. But don't you think, miss, as he's
neither kith nor kin to miss him, we might just bury him away before
morning, somewhere? There's better nor four hours of dark. I wish
we could put him i' the churchyard, but that can't be; but, to my
mind, the sooner we set about digging a place for him to lie in, poor
fellow, the better it'll be for us all in the end. I can pare a
piece of turf up where it'll never be missed, and if master'll take
one spade, and I another, why we'll lay him softly down, and cover
him up, and no one'll be the wiser."
There was no reply from either for a minute or so. Then Mr. Wilkins
said:
"If my father could have known of my living to this! Why, they will
try me as a criminal; and you, Ellinor? Dixon, you are right. We
must conceal it, or I must cut my throat, for I never could live
through it. One minute of passion, and my life blasted!"
"Come along, sir," said Dixon; "there's no time to lose." And they
went out in search of tools; Ellinor following them, shivering all
over, but begging that she might be with them, and not have to remain
in the study with -
She would not be bidden into her own room; she dreaded inaction and
solitude. She made herself busy with carrying heavy baskets of turf,
and straining her strength to the utmost; fetching all that was
wanted, with soft swift steps.
Once, as she passed near the open study door, she thought that she
heard a rustling, and a flash of hope came across her. Could he be
reviving? She entered, but a moment was enough to undeceive her; it
had only been a night rustle among the trees. Of hope, life, there
was none.
They dug the hole deep and well; working with fierce energy to quench
thought and remorse. Once or twice her father asked for brandy,
which Ellinor, reassured by the apparently good effect of the first
dose, brought to him without a word; and once at her father's
suggestion she brought food, such as she could find in the dining-
room without disturbing the household, for Dixon.
When all was ready for the reception of the body in its unblessed
grave, Mr. Wilkins bade Ellinor go up to her own room--she had done
all she could to help them; the rest must be done by them alone. She
felt that it must; and indeed both her nerves and her bodily strength
were giving way. She would have kissed her father, as he sat wearily
at the head of the grave--Dixon had gone in to make some arrangement
for carrying the corpse--but he pushed her away quietly, but
resolutely -
"No, Nelly, you must never kiss me again; I am a murderer."
"But I will, my own darling papa," said she, throwing her arms
passionately round his neck, and covering his face with kisses. "I
love you, and I don't care what you are, if you were twenty times a
murderer, which you are not; I am sure it was only an accident."
"Go in, my child, go in, and try to get some rest. But go in, for we
must finish as fast as we can. The moon is down; it will soon be
daylight. What a blessing there are no rooms on one side of the
house. Go, Nelly." And she went; straining herself up to move
noiselessly, with eyes averted, through the room which she shuddered
at as the place of hasty and unhallowed death.
Once in her own room she bolted the door on the inside, and then
stole to the window, as if some fascination impelled her to watch all
the proceedings to the end. But her aching eyes could hardly
penetrate through the thick darkness, which, at the time of the year
of which I am speaking, so closely precedes the dawn. She could
discern the tops of the trees against the sky, and could single out
the well-known one, at a little distance from the stem of which the
grave was made, in the very piece of turf over which so lately she
and Ralph had had their merry little tea-making; and where her
father, as she now remembered, had shuddered and shivered, as if the
ground on which his seat had then been placed was fateful and ominous
to him.
Those below moved softly and quietly in all they did; but every sound
had a significant and terrible interpretation to Ellinor's ears.
Before they had ended, the little birds had begun to pipe out their
gay reveillee to the dawn. Then doors closed, and all was profoundly
still.
Ellinor threw herself, in her clothes, on the bed; and was thankful
for the intense weary physical pain which took off something of the
anguish of thought--anguish that she fancied from time to time was
leading to insanity.
By-and-by the morning cold made her instinctively creep between the
blankets; and, once there, she fell into a dead heavy sleep.

CHAPTER VII.

Ellinor was awakened by a rapping at her door: it was her maid.

She was fully aroused in a moment, for she had fallen asleep with one
clearly defined plan in her mind, only one, for all thoughts and
cares having no relation to the terrible event were as though they
had never been. All her purpose was to shield her father from
suspicion. And to do this she must control herself--heart, mind, and
body must be ruled to this one end.
So she said to Mason:
"Let me lie half an hour longer; and beg Miss Monro not to wait
breakfast for me; but in half an hour bring me up a cup of strong
tea, for I have a bad headache."
Mason went away. Ellinor sprang up; rapidly undressed herself, and
got into bed again, so that when her maid returned with her
breakfast, there was no appearance of the night having been passed in
any unusual manner.
"How ill you do look, miss!" said Mason. "I am sure you had better
not get up yet."
Ellinor longed to ask if her father had yet shown himself; but this
question--so natural at any other time--seemed to her so suspicious
under the circumstances, that she could not bring her lips to frame
it. At any rate, she must get up and struggle to make the day like
all other days. So she rose, confessing that she did not feel very
well, but trying to make light of it, and when she could think of
anything but the one awe, to say a trivial sentence or two. But she
could not recollect how she behaved in general, for her life hitherto
had been simple, and led without any consciousness of effect.
Before she was dressed, a message came up to say that Mr. Livingstone
was in the drawing-room.
Mr. Livingstone! He belonged to the old life of yesterday! The
billows of the night had swept over his mark on the sands of her
memory; and it was only by a strong effort that she could remember
who he was--what he wanted. She sent Mason down to inquire from the
servant who admitted him whom it was that he had asked for.
"He asked for master first. But master has not rung for his water
yet, so James told him he was not up. Then he took thought for a
while, and asked could he speak to you, he would wait if you were not
at liberty but that he wished particular to see either master, or
you. So James asked him to sit down in the drawing-room, and he
would let you know."
"I must go," thought Ellinor. "I will send him away directly; to
come, thinking of marriage to a house like this--to-day, too!"
And she went down hastily, and in a hard unsparing mood towards a
man, whose affection for her she thought was like a gourd, grown up
in a night, and of no account, but as a piece of foolish, boyish
excitement.
She never thought of her own appearance--she had dressed without
looking in the glass. Her only object was to dismiss her would-be
suitor as speedily as possible. All feelings of shyness,
awkwardness, or maiden modesty, were quenched and overcome. In she
went.
He was standing by the mantelpiece as she entered. He made a step or
two forward to meet her; and then stopped, petrified, as it were, at
the sight of her hard white face.
"Miss Wilkins, I am afraid you are ill! I have come too early. But
I have to leave Hamley in half an hour, and I thought--Oh, Miss
Wilkins! what have I done?"
For she sank into the chair nearest to her, as if overcome by his
words; but, indeed, it was by the oppression of her own thoughts:
she was hardly conscious of his presence.
He came a step or two nearer, as if he longed to take her in his arms
and comfort and shelter her; but she stiffened herself and arose, and
by an effort walked towards the fireplace, and there stood, as if
awaiting what he would say next. But he was overwhelmed by her
aspect of illness. He almost forgot his own wishes, his own suit, in
his desire to relieve her from the pain, physical as he believed it,
under which she was suffering. It was she who had to begin the
subject.
"I received your letter yesterday, Mr. Livingstone. I was anxious to
see you to-day, in order that I might prevent you from speaking to my
father. I do not say anything of the kind of affection you can feel
for me--me, whom you have only seen once. All I shall say is, that
the sooner we both forget what I must call folly, the better."
She took the airs of a woman considerably older and more experienced
than himself. He thought her haughty; she was only miserable.
"You are mistaken," said he, more quietly and with more dignity than
was likely from his previous conduct. "I will not allow you to
characterise as folly what might be presumptuous on my part--I had no
business to express myself so soon--but which in its foundation was
true and sincere. That I can answer for most solemnly. It is
possible, though it may not be a usual thing, for a man to feel so
strongly attracted by the charms and qualities of a woman, even at
first sight, as to feel sure that she, and she alone, can make his
happiness. My folly consisted--there you are right--in even dreaming
that you could return my feelings in the slightest degree, when you
had only seen me once: and I am most truly ashamed of myself. I
cannot tell you how sorry I am, when I see how you have compelled
yourself to come and speak to me when you are so ill."
She staggered into a chair, for with all her wish for his speedy
dismissal, she was obliged to be seated. His hand was upon the bell.
"No, don't!" she said. "Wait a minute."
His eyes, bent upon her with a look of deep anxiety, touched her at
that moment, and she was on the point of shedding tears; but she
checked herself, and rose again.
"I will go," said he. "It is the kindest thing I can do. Only, may
I write? May I venture to write and urge what I have to say more
coherently?"
"No!" said she. "Don't write. I have given you my answer. We are
nothing, and can be nothing to each other. I am engaged to be
married. I should not have told you if you had not been so kind.
Thank you. But go now."
The poor young man's face fell, and he became almost as white as she
was for the instant. After a moment's reflection, he took her hand
in his, and said:
"May God bless you, and him too, whoever he be! But if you want a
friend, I may be that friend, may I not? and try to prove that my
words of regard were true, in a better and higher sense than I used
them at first." And kissing her passive hand, he was gone and she
was left sitting alone.
But solitude was not what she could bear. She went quickly upstairs,
and took a strong dose of sal-volatile, even while she heard Miss
Monro calling to her.
"My dear, who was that gentleman that has been closeted with you in
the drawing-room all this time?"
And then, without listening to Ellinor's reply, she went on:
"Mrs. Jackson has been here" (it was at Mrs. Jackson's house that Mr.
Dunster lodged), "wanting to know if we could tell her where Mr.
Dunster was, for he never came home last night at all. And you were
in the drawing-room with--who did you say he was?--that Mr.
Livingstone, who might have come at a better time to bid good-bye;
and he had never dined here, had he? so I don't see any reason he had
to come calling, and P. P. C.-ing, and your papa NOT up. So I said
to Mrs. Jackson, 'I'll send and ask Mr. Wilkins, if you like, but I
don't see any use in it, for I can tell you just as well as anybody,
that Mr. Dunster is not in this house, wherever he may be.' Yet
nothing would satisfy her but that some one must go and waken up your
papa, and ask if he could tell where Mr. Dunster was."
"And did papa?" inquired Ellinor, her dry throat huskily forming the
inquiry that seemed to be expected from her.
"No! to be sure not. How should Mr. Wilkins know? As I said to Mrs.
Jackson, 'Mr. Wilkins is not likely to know where Mr. Dunster spends
his time when he is not in the office, for they do not move in the
same rank of life, my good woman; and Mrs. Jackson apologised, but
said that yesterday they had both been dining at Mr. Hodgson's
together, she believed; and somehow she had got it into her head that
Mr. Dunster might have missed his way in coming along Moor Lane, and
might have slipped into the canal; so she just thought she would step
up and ask Mr. Wilkins if they had left Mr. Hodgson's together, or if
your papa had driven home. I asked her why she had not told me all
these particulars before, for I could have asked your papa myself all
about when he last saw Mr. Dunster; and I went up to ask him a second
time, but he did not like it at all, for he was busy dressing, and I
had to shout my questions through the door, and he could not always
hear me at first."
"What did he say?"
"Oh! he had walked part of the way with Mr. Dunster, and then cut
across by the short path through the fields, as far as I could
understand him through the door. He seemed very much annoyed to hear
that Mr. Dunster had not been at home all night; but he said I was to
tell Mrs. Jackson that he would go to the office as soon as he had
had his breakfast, which he ordered to be sent up directly into his
own room, and he had no doubt it would all turn out right, but that
she had better go home at once. And, as I told her, she might find
Mr. Dunster there by the time she got there. There, there is your I
papa going out! He has not lost any time over his breakfast!"
Ellinor had taken up the Hamley Examiner, a daily paper, which lay on
the table, to hide her face in the first instance; but it served a
second purpose, as she glanced languidly over the columns of the
advertisements.
"Oh! here are Colonel Macdonald's orchideous plants to be sold. All
the stock of hothouse and stove plants at Hartwell Priory. I must
send James over to Hartwell to attend the sale. It is to last for
three days."
"But can he be spared for so long?"
"Oh, yes; he had better stay at the little inn there, to be on the
spot. Three days," and as she spoke, she ran out to the gardener,
who was sweeping up the newly-mown grass in the front of the house.
She gave him hasty and unlimited directions, only seeming intent--if
any one had been suspiciously watching her words and actions--to
hurry him off to the distant village, where the auction was to take
place.
When he was once gone she breathed more freely. Now, no one but the
three cognisant of the terrible reason of the disturbance of the turf
under the trees in a certain spot in the belt round the flower-
garden, would be likely to go into the place. Miss Monro might
wander round with a book in her hand; but she never noticed anything,
and was short-sighted into the bargain. Three days of this moist,
warm, growing weather, and the green grass would spring, just as if
life--was what it had been twenty-four hours before.
When all this was done and said, it seemed as if Ellinor's strength
and spirit sank down at once. Her voice became feeble, her aspect
wan; and although she told Miss Monro that nothing was the matter,
yet it was impossible for any one who loved her not to perceive that
she was far from well. The kind governess placed her pupil on the
sofa, covered her feet up warmly, darkened the room, and then stole
out on tiptoe, fancying that Ellinor would sleep. Her eyes were,
indeed, shut; but try as much as she would to be quiet, she was up in
less than five minutes after Miss Monro had left the room, and
walking up and down in all the restless agony of body that arises
from an overstrained mind. But soon Miss Monro reappeared, bringing
with her a dose of soothing medicine of her own concocting, for she
was great in domestic quackery. What the medicine was Ellinor did
not care to know; she drank it without any sign of her usual merry
resistance to physic of Miss Monro's ordering; and as the latter took
up a book, and showed a set purpose of remaining with her patient,
Ellinor was compelled to lie still, and presently fell asleep.
She awakened late in the afternoon with a start. Her father was
standing over her, listening to Miss Monro's account of her
indisposition. She only caught one glimpse of his strangely altered
countenance, and hid her head in the cushions--hid it from memory,
not from him. For in an instant she must have conjectured the
interpretation he was likely to put upon her shrinking action, and
she had turned towards him, and had thrown her arms round his neck,
and was kissing his cold, passive face. Then she fell back. But all
this time their sad eyes never met--they dreaded the look of
recollection that must be in each other's gaze.
"There, my dear!" said Miss Monro. "Now you must lie still till I
fetch you a little broth. You are better now, are not you?"
"You need not go for the broth, Miss Monro," said Mr. Wilkins,
ringing the bell. "Fletcher can surely bring it." He dreaded the
being left alone with his daughter--nor did she fear it less. She
heard the strange alteration in her father's voice, hard and hoarse,
as if it was an effort to speak. The physical signs of his suffering
cut her to the heart; and yet she wondered how it was that they could
both be alive, or, if alive, they were not rending their garments and
crying aloud. Mr. Wilkins seemed to have lost the power of careless
action and speech, it is true. He wished to leave the room now his
anxiety about his daughter was relieved, but hardly knew how to set
about it. He was obliged to think about the veriest trifle, in order
that by an effort of reason he might understand how he should have
spoken or acted if he had been free from blood-guiltiness. Ellinor
understood all by intuition. But henceforward the unspoken
comprehension of each other's hidden motions made their mutual
presence a burdensome anxiety to each. Miss Monro was a relief; they
were glad of her as a third person, unconscious of the secret which
constrained them. This afternoon her unconsciousness gave present
pain, although on after reflection each found in her speeches a cause
of rejoicing.
"And Mr. Dunster, Mr. Wilkins, has he come home yet?"
A moment's pause, in which Mr. Wilkins pumped the words out of his
husky throat:
"I have not heard. I have been riding. I went on business to Mr.
Estcourt's. Perhaps you will be so kind as to send and inquire at
Mrs. Jackson's."
Ellinor sickened at the words. She had been all her life a truthful
plain-spoken girl. She held herself high above deceit. Yet, here
came the necessity for deceit--a snare spread around her. She had
not revolted so much from the deed which brought unpremeditated
death, as she did from these words of her father's. The night
before, in her mad fever of affright, she had fancied that to conceal
the body was all that would be required; she had not looked forward
to the long, weary course of small lies, to be done and said,
involved in that one mistaken action. Yet, while her father's words
made her soul revolt, his appearance melted her heart, as she caught
it, half turned away from her, neither looking straight at Miss
Monro, nor at anything materially visible. His hollow sunken eye
seemed to Ellinor to have a vision of the dead man before it. His
cheek was livid and worn, and its healthy colouring gained by years
of hearty out-door exercise, was all gone into the wanness of age.
His hair, even to Ellinor, seemed greyer for the past night of
wretchedness. He stooped, and looked dreamily earthward, where
formerly he had stood erect. It needed all the pity called forth by
such observation to quench Ellinor's passionate contempt for the
course on which she and her father were embarked, when she heard him
repeat his words to the servant who came with her broth.
"Fletcher! go to Mrs. Jackson's and inquire if Mr. Dunster is come
home yet. I want to speak to him."
"To him!" lying dead where he had been laid; killed by the man who
now asked for his presence. Ellinor shut her eyes, and lay back in
despair. She wished she might die, and be out of this horrible
tangle of events.
Two minutes after, she was conscious of her father and Miss Monro
stealing softly out of the room. They thought that she slept.
She sprang off the sofa and knelt down.
"Oh, God," she prayed, "Thou knowest! Help me! There is none other
help but Thee!"
I suppose she fainted. For, an hour or more afterwards Miss Monro,
coming in, found her lying insensible by the side of the sofa.
She was carried to bed. She was not delirious, she was only in a
stupor, which they feared might end in delirium. To obviate this,
her father sent far and wide for skilful physicians, who tended her,
almost at the rate of a guinea the minute.
People said how hard it was upon Mr. Wilkins, that scarcely had that
wretch Dunster gone off, with no one knows how much out of the trusts
of the firm, before his only child fell ill. And, to tell the truth,
he himself looked burnt and scared with affliction. He had a
startled look, they said, as if he never could tell, after such
experience, from which side the awful proofs of the uncertainty of
earth would appear, the terrible phantoms of unforeseen dread. Both
rich and poor, town and country, sympathised with him. The rich
cared not to press their claims, or their business, at such a time;
and only wondered, in their superficial talk after dinner, how such a
good fellow as Wilkins could ever have been deceived by a man like
Dunster. Even Sir Frank Holster and his lady forgot their old
quarrel, and came to inquire after Ellinor, and sent her hothouse
fruit by the bushel.
Mr. Corbet behaved as an anxious lover should do. He wrote daily to
Miss Monro to beg for the most minute bulletins; he procured
everything in town that any doctor even fancied might be of service,
he came down as soon as there was the slightest hint of permission
that Ellinor might see him. He overpowered her with tender words and
caresses, till at last she shrank away from them, as from something
too bewildering, and past all right comprehension.
But one night before this, when all windows and doors stood open to
admit the least breath that stirred the sultry July air, a servant on
velvet tiptoe had stolen up to Ellinor's open door, and had beckoned
out of the chamber of the sleeper the ever watchful nurse, Miss
Monro.
"A gentleman wants you," were all the words the housemaid dared to
say so close to the bedroom. And softly, softly Miss Monro stepped
down the stairs, into the drawing-room; and there she saw Mr.
Livingstone. But she did not know him; she had never seen him
before.
"I have travelled all day. I heard she was ill--was dying. May I
just have one more look at her? I will not speak; I will hardly
breathe. Only let me see her once again!"
"I beg your pardon, sir, but I don't know who you are; and if you
mean Miss Wilkins, by 'her,' she is very ill, but we hope not dying.
She was very ill, indeed, yesterday; very dangerously ill, I may say,
but she is having a good sleep, in consequence of a soporific
medicine, and we are really beginning to hope--"
But just here Miss Monro's hand was taken, and, to her infinite
surprise, was kissed before she could remember how improper such
behaviour was.
"God bless you, madam, for saying so. But if she sleeps, will you
let me see her? it can do no harm, for I will tread as if on egg
shells; and I have come so far--if I might just look on her sweet
face. Pray, madam, let me just have one sight of her. I will not
ask for more."
But he did ask for more after he had had his wish. He stole upstairs
after Miss Monro, who looked round reproachfully at him if even a
nightingale sang, or an owl hooted in the trees outside the open
windows, yet who paused to say herself, outside Mr. Wilkins's chamber
door,
"Her father's room; he has not been in bed for six nights, till to-
night; pray do not make a noise to waken him." And on into the deep
stillness of the hushed room, where one clear ray of hidden lamp-
light shot athwart the door, where a watcher, breathing softly, sat
beside the bed--where Ellinor's dark head lay motionless on the white
pillow, her face almost as white, her form almost as still. You
might have heard a pin fall. After a while he moved to withdraw.
Miss Monro, jealous of every sound, followed him, with steps all the
more heavy because they were taken with so much care, down the
stairs, back into the drawing-room. By the bed-candle flaring in the
draught, she saw that there was the glittering mark of wet tears on
his cheek; and she felt, as she said afterwards, "sorry for the young
man." And yet she urged him to go, for she knew that she might be
wanted upstairs. He took her hand, and wrung it hard.
"Thank you. She looked so changed--oh! she looked as though she were
dead. You will write--Herbert Livingstone, Langham Vicarage,
Yorkshire; you will promise me to write. If I could do anything for
her, but I can but pray. Oh, my darling; my darling! and I have no
right to be with her."
"Go away, there's a good young man," said Miss Monro, all the more
pressing to hurry him out by the front door, because she was afraid
of his emotion overmastering him, and making him noisy in his
demonstrations. "Yes, I will write; I will write, never fear!" and
she bolted the door behind him, and was thankful.
Two minutes afterwards there was a low tap; she undid the fastenings,
and there he stood, pale in the moonlight.
"Please don't tell her I came to ask about her; she might not like
it."
"No, no! not I! Poor creature, she's not likely to care to hear
anything this long while. She never roused at Mr. Corbet's name."
"Mr. Corbet's!" said Livingstone, below his breath, and he turned and
went away; this time for good.
But Ellinor recovered. She knew she was recovering, when day after
day she felt involuntary strength and appetite return. Her body
seemed stronger than her will; for that would have induced her to
creep into her grave, and shut her eyes for ever on this world, so
full of troubles.
She lay, for the most part, with her eyes closed, very still and
quiet; but she thought with the intensity of one who seeks for lost
peace, and cannot find it. She began to see that if in the mad
impulses of that mad nightmare of horror, they had all strengthened
each other, and dared to be frank and open, confessing a great fault,
a greater disaster, a greater woe--which in the first instance was
hardly a crime--their future course, though sad and sorrowful, would
have been a simple and straightforward one to tread. But it was not
for her to undo what was done, and to reveal the error and shame of a
father. Only she, turning anew to God, in the solemn and quiet
watches of the night, made a covenant, that in her conduct, her own
personal individual life, she would act loyally and truthfully. And
as for the future, and all the terrible chances involved in it, she
would leave it in His hands--if, indeed (and here came in the
Tempter), He would watch over one whose life hereafter must seem
based upon a lie. Her only plea, offered "standing afar off" was,
"The lie is said and done and over--it was not for my own sake. Can
filial piety be so overcome by the rights of justice and truth, as to
demand of me that I should reveal my father's guilt."
Her father's severe sharp punishment began. He knew why she
suffered, what made her young strength falter and tremble, what made
her life seem nigh about to be quenched in death. Yet he could not
take his sorrow and care in the natural manner. He was obliged to
think how every word and deed would be construed. He fancied that
people were watching him with suspicious eyes, when nothing was
further from their thoughts. For once let the "public" of any place
be possessed by an idea, it is more difficult to dislodge it than any
one imagines who has not tried. If Mr. Wilkins had gone into Hamley
market-place, and proclaimed himself guilty of the manslaughter of
Mr. Dunster--nay, if he had detailed all the circumstances--the
people would have exclaimed, "Poor man, he is crazed by this
discovery of the unworthiness of the man he trusted so; and no
wonder--it was such a thing to have done--to have defrauded his
partner to such an extent, and then have made off to America!"
For many small circumstances, which I do not stop to detail here,
went far to prove this, as we know, unfounded supposition; and Mr.
Wilkins, who was known, from his handsome boyhood, through his comely
manhood, up to the present time, by all the people in Hamley, was an
object of sympathy and respect to every one who saw him, as he passed
by, old, and lorn, and haggard before his time, all through the evil
conduct of one, London-bred, who was as a hard, unlovely stranger to
the popular mind of this little country town.
Mr. Wilkins's own servants liked him. The workings of his
temptations were such as they could understand. If he had been hot-
tempered he had also been generous, or I should rather say careless
and lavish with his money. And now that he was cheated and
impoverished by his partner's delinquency, they thought it no wonder
that he drank long and deep in the solitary evenings which he passed
at home. It was not that he was without invitations. Every one came
forward to testify their respect for him by asking him to their
houses. He had probably never been so universally popular since his
father's death. But, as he said, he did not care to go into society
while his daughter was so ill--he had no spirits for company.
But if any one had cared to observe his conduct at home, and to draw
conclusions from it, they could have noticed that, anxious as he was
about Ellinor, he rather avoided than sought her presence, now that
her consciousness and memory were restored. Nor did she ask for, or
wish for him. The presence of each was a burden to the other. Oh,
sad and woeful night of May--overshadowing the coming summer months
with gloom and bitter remorse!

CHAPTER VIII.
Still youth prevailed over all. Ellinor got well, as I have said,
even when she would fain have died. And the afternoon came when she
left her room. Miss Monro would gladly have made a festival of her
recovery, and have had her conveyed into the unused drawing-room.
But Ellinor begged that she might be taken into the library--into the
school-room--anywhere (thought she) not looking on the side of the
house on the flower-garden, which she had felt in all her illness as
a ghastly pressure lying within sight of those very windows, through
which the morning sun streamed right upon her bed--like the accusing
angel, bringing all hidden things to light.
And when Ellinor was better still, when the Bath-chair had been sent
up for her use, by some kindly old maid, out of Hamley, she still
petitioned that it might be kept on the lawn or town side of the
house, away from the flower-garden.
One day she almost screamed, when, as she was going to the front
door, she saw Dixon standing ready to draw her, instead of Fletcher
the servant who usually went. But she checked all demonstration of
feeling; although it was the first time she had seen him since he and
she and one more had worked their hearts out in hard bodily labour.
He looked so stern and ill! Cross, too, which she had never seen him
before.
As soon as they were out of immediate sight of the windows, she asked
him to stop, forcing herself to speak to him.
"Dixon, you look very poorly," she said, trembling as she spoke.
"Ay!" said he. "We didn't think much of it at the time, did we, Miss
Nelly? But it'll be the death on us, I'm thinking. It has aged me
above a bit. All my fifty years afore were but as a forenoon of
child's play to that night. Measter, too--I could a-bear a good
deal, but measter cuts through the stable-yard, and past me, wi'out a
word, as if I was poison, or a stinking foumart. It's that as is
worst, Miss Nelly, it is."
And the poor man brushed some tears from his eyes with the back of
his withered, furrowed hand. Ellinor caught the infection, and cried
outright, sobbed like a child, even while she held out her little
white thin hand to his grasp. For as soon as he saw her emotion, he
was penitent for what he had said.
"Don't now--don't," was all he could think of to say.
"Dixon!" said she at length, "you must not mind it. You must try not
to mind it. I see he does not like to be reminded of that, even by
seeing me. He tries never to be alone with me. My poor old Dixon,
it has spoilt my life for me; for I don't think he loves me any
more."
She sobbed as if her heart would break; and now it was Dixon's turn
to be comforter.
"Ah, dear, my blessing, he loves you above everything. It's only he
can't a-bear the sight of us, as is but natural. And if he doesn't
fancy being alone with you, there's always one as does, and that's a
comfort at the worst of times. And don't ye fret about what I said a
minute ago. I were put out because measter all but pushed me out of
his way this morning, without never a word. But I were an old fool
for telling ye. And I've really forgotten why I told Fletcher I'd
drag ye a bit about to-day. Th' gardener is beginning for to wonder
as you don't want to see th' annuals and bedding-out things as you
were so particular about in May. And I thought I'd just have a word
wi' ye, and then if you'd let me, we'd go together just once round
the flower-garden, just to say you've been, you know, and to give
them chaps a bit of praise. You'll only have to look on the beds, my
pretty, and it must be done some time. So come along!"
He began to pull resolutely in the direction of the flower-garden.
Ellinor bit her lips to keep in the cry of repugnance that rose to
them. As Dixon stopped to unlock the door, he said:
"It's not hardness, nothing like it; I've waited till I heerd you
were better; but it's in for a penny in for a pound wi' us all; and
folk may talk; and bless your little brave heart, you'll stand a deal
for your father's sake, and so will I, though I do feel it above a
bit, when he puts out his hand as if to keep me off, and I only going
to speak to him about Clipper's knees; though I'll own I had wondered
many a day when I was to have the good-morrow master never missed
sin' he were a boy till--Well! and now you've seen the beds, and can
say they looked mighty pretty, and is done all as you wished; and
we're got out again, and breathing fresher air than yon sunbaked
hole, with its smelling flowers, not half so wholesome to snuff at as
good stable-dung."
So the good man chatted on; not without the purpose of giving Ellinor
time to recover herself; and partly also to drown his own cares,
which lay heavier on his heart than he could say. But he thought
himself rewarded by Ellinor's thanks, and warm pressure of his hard
hand as she got out at the front door, and bade him good-by.
The break to her days of weary monotony was the letters she
constantly received from Mr. Corbet. And yet here again lurked the
sting. He was all astonishment and indignation at Mr. Dunster's
disappearance, or rather flight, to America. And now that she was
growing stronger, he did not scruple to express curiosity respecting
the details, never doubting but that she was perfectly acquainted
with much that he wanted to know; although he had too much delicacy
to question her on the point which was most important of all in his
eyes, namely, how far it had affected Mr. Wilkins's worldly
prospects; for the report prevalent in Hamley had reached London,
that Mr. Dunster had made away with, or carried off, trust property
to a considerable extent, for all which Mr. Wilkins would of course
be liable.
It was hard work for Ralph Corbet to keep from seeking direct
information on this head from Mr. Ness, or, indeed, from Mr. Wilkins
himself. But he restrained himself, knowing that in August he should
be able to make all these inquiries personally. Before the end of
the long vacation he had hoped to marry Ellinor: that was the time
which had been planned by them when they had met in the early spring
before her illness and all this misfortune happened. But now, as he
wrote to his father, nothing could be definitely arranged until he
had paid his visit to Hamley, and seen the state of affairs.
Accordingly one Saturday in August, he came to Ford Bank, this time
as a visitor to Ellinor's home, instead of to his old quarters at Mr.
Ness's.
The house was still as if asleep in the full heat of the afternoon
sun, as Mr. Corbet drove up. The window-blinds were down; the front
door wide open, great stands of heliotrope and roses and geraniums
stood just within the shadow of the hall; but through all the silence
his approach seemed to excite no commotion. He thought it strange
that he had not been watched for, that Ellinor did not come running
out to meet him, that she allowed Fletcher to come and attend to his
luggage, and usher him into the library just like any common visitor,
any morning-caller. He stiffened himself up into a moment's
indignant coldness of manner. But it vanished in an instant when, on
the door being opened, he saw Ellinor standing holding by the table,
looking for his appearance with almost panting anxiety. He thought
of nothing then but her evident weakness, her changed looks, for
which no account of her illness had prepared him. For she was deadly
white, lips and all; and her dark eyes seemed unnaturally enlarged,
while the caves in which they were set were strangely deep and
hollow. Her hair, too, had been cut off pretty closely; she did not
usually wear a cap, but with some faint idea of making herself look
better in his eye, she had put on one this day, and the effect was
that she seemed to be forty years of age; but one instant after he
had come in, her pale face was flooded with crimson, and her eyes
were full of tears. She had hard work to keep herself from going
into hysterics, but she instinctively knew how much he would hate a
scene, and she checked herself in time
"Oh," she murmured, "I am so glad to see you; it is such a comfort,
such an infinite pleasure." And so she went on, cooing out words
over him, and stroking his hair with her thin fingers; while he
rather tried to avert his eyes, he was so much afraid of betraying
how much he thought her altered.
But when she came down, dressed for dinner, this sense of her change
was diminished to him. Her short brown hair had already a little
wave, and was ornamented by some black lace; she wore a large black
lace shawl--it had been her mother's of old--over some delicate-
coloured muslin dress; her face was slightly flushed, and had the
tints of a wild rose; her lips kept pale and trembling with
involuntary motion, it is true; and as the lovers stood together,
hand in hand, by the window, he was aware of a little convulsive
twitching at every noise, even while she seemed gazing in tranquil
pleasure on the long smooth slope of the newly-mown lawn, stretching
down to the little brook that prattled merrily over the stones on its
merry course to Hamley town.
He felt a stronger twitch than ever before; even while his ear, less
delicate than hers, could distinguish no peculiar sound. About two
minutes after Mr. Wilkins entered the room. He came up to Mr. Corbet
with a warm welcome: some of it real, some of it assumed. He talked
volubly to him, taking little or no notice of Ellinor, who dropped
into the background, and sat down on the sofa by Miss Monro; for on
this day they were all to dine together. Ralph Corbet thought that
Mr. Wilkins was aged; but no wonder, after all his anxiety of various
kinds: Mr. Dunster's flight and reported defalcations, Ellinor's
illness, of the seriousness of which her lover was now convinced by
her appearance.
He would fain have spoken more to her during the dinner that ensued,
but Mr. Wilkins absorbed all his attention, talking and questioning
on subjects that left the ladies out of the conversation almost
perpetually. Mr. Corbet recognised his host's fine tact, even while
his persistence in talking annoyed him. He was quite sure that Mr.
Wilkins was anxious to spare his daughter any exertion beyond that--
to which, indeed, she seemed scarely equal--of sitting at the head of
the table. And the more her father talked--so fine an observer was
Mr. Corbet--the more silent and depressed Ellinor appeared. But by-
and-by he accounted for this inverse ratio of gaiety, as he perceived
how quickly Mr. Wilkins had his glass replenished. And here, again,
Mr. Corbet drew his conclusions, from the silent way in which,
without a word or a sign from his master, Fletcher gave him more wine
continually--wine that was drained off at once.
"Six glasses of sherry before dessert," thought Mr. Corbet to
himself. "Bad habit--no wonder Ellinor looks grave." And when the
gentlemen were left alone, Mr. Wilkins helped himself even still more
freely; yet without the slightest effect on the clearness and
brilliancy of his conversation. He had always talked well and
racily, that Ralph knew, and in this power he now recognised a
temptation to which he feared that his future father-in-law had
succumbed. And yet, while he perceived that this gift led into
temptation, he coveted it for himself; for he was perfectly aware
that this fluency, this happy choice of epithets, was the one thing
he should fail in when he began to enter into the more active career
of his profession. But after some time spent in listening, and
admiring, with this little feeling of envy lurking in the background,
Mr. Corbet became aware of Mr. Wilkins's increasing confusion of
ideas, and rather unnatural merriment; and, with a sudden revulsion
from admiration to disgust, he rose up to go into the library, where
Ellinor and Miss Monro were sitting. Mr. Wilkins accompanied him,
laughing and talking somewhat loudly. Was Ellinor aware of her
father's state? Of that Mr. Corbet could not be sure. She looked up
with grave sad eyes as they came into the room, but with no apparent
sensation of surprise, annoyance, or shame. When her glance met her
father's, Mr. Corbet noticed that it seemed to sober the latter
immediately. He sat down near the open window, and did not speak,
but sighed heavily from time to time. Miss Monro took up a book, in
order to leave the young people to themselves; and after a little low
murmured conversation, Ellinor went upstairs to put on her things for
a stroll through the meadows by the river-side.
They were sometimes sauntering along in the lovely summer twilight,
now resting on some grassy hedge-row bank, or standing still, looking
at the great barges, with their crimson sails, lazily floating down
the river, making ripples on the glassy opal surface of the water.
They did not talk very much; Ellinor seemed disinclined for the
exertion; and her lover was thinking over Mr. Wilkins's behaviour,
with some surprise and distaste of the habit so evidently growing
upon him.
They came home, looking serious and tired: yet they could not
account for their fatigue by the length of their walk, and Miss
Monro, forgetting Autolycus's song, kept fidgeting about Ellinor, and
wondering how it was she looked so pale, if she had only been as far
as the Ash Meadow. To escape from this wonder, Ellinor went early to
bed. Mr. Wilkins was gone, no one knew where, and Ralph and Miss
Monro were left to a half-hour's tete-a-tete. He thought he could
easily account for Ellinor's languor, if, indeed, she had perceived
as much as he had done of her father's state, when they had come into
the library after dinner. But there were many details which he was
anxious to hear from a comparatively indifferent person, and as soon
as he could, he passed on from the conversation about Ellinor's
health, to inquiries as to the whole affair of Mr. Dunster's
disappearance.
Next to her anxiety about Ellinor, Miss Monro liked to dilate on the
mystery connected with Mr. Dunster's flight; for that was the word
she employed without hesitation, as she gave him the account of the
event universally received and believed in by the people of Hamley.
How Mr. Dunster had never been liked by any one; how everybody
remembered that he could never look them straight in the face; how he
always seemed to be hiding something that he did not want to have
known; how he had drawn a large sum (exact quantity unknown) out of
the county bank only the day before he left Hamley, doubtless in
preparation for his escape; how some one had told Mr. Wilkins he had
seen a man just like Dunster lurking about the docks at Liverpool,
about two days after he had left his lodgings, but that this some
one, being in a hurry, had not cared to stop and speak to the man;
how that the affairs in the office were discovered to be in such a
sad state that it was no wonder that Mr. Dunster had absconded--he
that had been so trusted by poor dear Mr. Wilkins. Money gone no one
knew how or where.
"But has he no friends who can explain his proceedings, and account
for the missing money, in some way?" asked Mr. Corbet.
"No, none. Mr. Wilkins has written everywhere, right and left, I
believe. I know he had a letter from Mr. Dunster's nearest relation-
-a tradesman in the City--a cousin, I think, and he could give no
information in any way. He knew that about ten years ago Mr. Dunster
had had a great fancy for going to America, and had read a great many
travels--all just what a man would do before going off to a country."
"Ten years is a long time beforehand," said Mr. Corbet, half smiling;
"shows malice prepense with a vengeance." But then, turning grave,
he said: "Did he leave Hamley in debt?"
"No; I never heard of that," said Miss Monro, rather unwillingly, for
she considered it as a piece of loyalty to the Wilkinses, whom Mr.
Dunster had injured (as she thought) to blacken his character as much
as was consistent with any degree of truth.
"It is a strange story," said Mr. Corbet, musing.
"Not at all," she replied, quickly; "I am sure, if you had seen the
man, with one or two side-locks of hair combed over his baldness, as
if he were ashamed of it, and his eyes that never looked at you, and
his way of eating with his knife when he thought he was not observed-
-oh, and numbers of things!--you would not think it strange."
Mr. Corbet smiled.
"I only meant that he seems to have had no extravagant or vicious
habits which would account for his embezzlement of the money that is
missing--but, to be sure, money in itself is a temptation--only he,
being a partner, was in a fair way of making it without risk to
himself. Has Mr. Wilkins taken any steps to have him arrested in
America? He might easily do that."
"Oh, my dear Mr. Ralph, you don't know our good Mr. Wilkins! He
would rather bear the loss, I am sure, and all this trouble and care
which it has brought upon him, than be revenged upon Mr. Dunster."
"Revenged! What nonsense! It is simple justice--justice to himself
and to others--to see that villainy is so sufficiently punished as to
deter others from entering upon such courses. But I have little
doubt Mr. Wilkins has taken the right steps; he is not the man to sit
down quietly under such a loss."
"No, indeed! he had him advertised in the Times and in the county
papers, and offered a reward of twenty pounds for information
concerning him."
"Twenty pounds was too little."
"So I said. I told Ellinor that I would give twenty pounds myself to
have him apprehended, and she, poor darling! fell a-trembling, and
said, 'I would give all I have--I would give my life.' And then she
was in such distress, and sobbed so, I promised her I would never
name it to her again."
"Poor child--poor child! she wants change of scene. Her nerves have
been sadly shaken by her illness."
The next day was Sunday; Ellinor was to go to church for the first
time since her illness. Her father had decided it for her, or else
she would fain have stayed away--she would hardly acknowledge why,
even to herself, but it seemed to her as if the very words and
presence of God must there search her and find her out.
She went early, leaning on the arm of her lover, and trying to forget
the past in the present. They walked slowly along between the rows
of waving golden corn ripe for the harvest. Mr. Corbet gathered blue
and scarlet flowers, and made up a little rustic nosegay for her.
She took and stuck it in her girdle, smiling faintly as she did so.
Hamley Church had, in former days, been collegiate, and was, in
consequence, much larger and grander than the majority of country-
town churches. The Ford Bank pew was a square one, downstairs; the
Ford Bank servants sat in a front pew in the gallery, right before
their master. Ellinor was "hardening her heart" not to listen, not
to hearken to what might disturb the wound which was just being
skinned over, when she caught Dixon's face up above. He looked worn,
sad, soured, and anxious to a miserable degree; but he was straining
eyes and ears, heart and soul, to hear the solemn words read from the
pulpit, as if in them alone he could find help in his strait.
Ellinor felt rebuked and humbled.
She was in a tumultuous state of mind when they left church; she
wished to do her duty, yet could not ascertain what it was. Who was
to help her with wisdom and advice? Assuredly he to whom her future
life was to be trusted. But the case must be stated in an impersonal
form. No one, not even her husband, must ever know anything against
her father from her. Ellinor was so artless herself, that she had
little idea how quickly and easily some people can penetrate motives,
and combine disjointed sentences. She began to speak to Ralph on
their slow, sauntering walk homewards through the quiet meadows:
"Suppose, Ralph, that a girl was engaged to be married--"
"I can very easily suppose that, with you by me," said he, filling up
her pause.
"Oh! but I don't mean myself at all," replied she, reddening. "I am
only thinking of what might happen; and suppose that this girl knew
of some one belonging to her--we will call it a brother--who had done
something wrong, that would bring disgrace upon the whole family if
it was known--though, indeed, it might not have been so very wrong as
it seemed, and as it would look to the world--ought she to break off
her engagement for fear of involving her lover in the disgrace?"
"Certainly not, without telling him her reason for doing so."
"Ah! but suppose she could not. She might not be at liberty to do
so."
"I can't answer supposititious cases. I must have the facts--if
facts there are--more plainly before me before I can give an opinion.
Who are you thinking of, Ellinor?" asked he, rather abruptly.
"Oh, of no one," she answered in affright. "Why should I be thinking
of any one? I often try to plan out what I should do, or what I
ought to do, if such and such a thing happened, just as you recollect
I used to wonder if I should have presence of mind in case of fire."
"Then, after all, you yourself are the girl who is engaged, and who
has the imaginary brother who gets into disgrace?"
"Yes, I suppose so," said she, a little annoyed at having betrayed
any personal interest in the affair.
He was silent, meditating.
"There is nothing wrong in it," said she, timidly, "is there?"
"I think you had better tell me fully out what is in your mind," he
replied, kindly. "Something has happened which has suggested these
questions. Are you putting yourself in the place of any one about
whom you have been hearing lately? I know you used to do so
formerly, when you were a little girl."
"No; it was a very foolish question of mine, and I ought not to have
said anything about it. See! here is Mr. Ness overtaking us."
The clergyman joined them on the broad walk that ran by the river-
side, and the talk became general. It was a relief to Ellinor, who
had not attained her end, but who had gone far towards betraying
something of her own individual interest in the question she had
asked. Ralph had been more struck even by her manner than her words.
He was sure that something lurked behind, and had an idea of his own
that it was connected with Dunster's disappearance. But he was glad
that Mr. Ness's joining them gave him leisure to consider a little.
The end of his reflections was, that the next day, Monday, he went
into the town, and artfully learnt all he could hear about Mr
Dunster's character and mode of going on; and with still more skill
he extracted the popular opinion as to the embarrassed nature of Mr.
Wilkins's affairs--embarrassment which was generally attributed to
Dunster's disappearance with a good large sum belonging to the firm
in his possession. But Mr. Corbet thought otherwise; he had
accustomed himself to seek out the baser motives for men's conduct,
and to call the result of these researches wisdom. He imagined that
Dunster had been well paid by Mr. Wilkins for his disappearance,
which was an easy way of accounting for the derangement of accounts
and loss of money that arose, in fact, from Mr. Wilkins's
extravagance of habits and growing intemperance.
On the Monday afternoon he said to Ellinor, "Mr. Ness interrupted us
yesterday in a very interesting conversation. Do you remember,
love?"
Ellinor reddened and kept her head still more intently bent over a
sketch she was making.
"Yes; I recollect."
"I have been thinking about it. I still think she ought to tell her
lover that such disgrace hung over him--I mean, over the family with
whom he was going to connect himself. Of course, the only effect
would be to make him stand by her still more for her frankness."
"Oh! but, Ralph, it might perhaps be something she ought not to tell,
whatever came of her silence."
"Of course there might be all sorts of cases. Unless I knew more I
could not pretend to judge."
This was said rather more coolly. It had the desired effect.
Ellinor laid down her brush, and covered her face with her hand.
After a pause, she turned towards him and said:
"I will tell you this; and more you must not ask me. I know you are
as safe as can be. I am the girl, you are the lover, and possible
shame hangs over my father, if something--oh, so dreadful" (here she
blanched), "but not so very much his fault, is ever found out."
Though this was nothing more than he expected, though Ralph thought
that he was aware what the dreadful something might be, yet, when it
was acknowledged in words, his heart contracted, and for a moment he
forgot the intent, wistful, beautiful face, creeping close to his to
read his expression aright. But after that his presence of mind came
in aid. He took her in his arms and kissed her; murmuring fond words
of sympathy, and promises of faith, nay, even of greater love than
before, since greater need she might have of that love. But somehow
he was glad when the dressing-bell rang, and in the solitude of his
own room he could reflect on what he had heard; for the intelligence
had been a great shock to him, although he had fancied that his
morning's inquiries had prepared him for it.

CHAPTER IX.

Ralph Corbet found it a very difficult thing to keep down his

curiosity during the next few days. It was a miserable thing to have
Ellinor's unspoken secret severing them like a phantom. But he had
given her his word that he would make no further inquiries from her.
Indeed, he thought he could well enough make out the outline of past
events; still, there was too much left to conjecture for his mind not
to be always busy on the subject. He felt inclined to probe Mr.
Wilkins in their after-dinner conversation, in which his host was
frank and lax enough on many subjects. But once touch on the name of
Dunster and Mr. Wilkins sank into a kind of suspicious depression of
spirits; talking little, and with evident caution; and from time to
time shooting furtive glances at his interlocutor's face. Ellinor
was resolutely impervious to any attempts of his to bring his
conversation with her back to the subject which more and more
engrossed Ralph Corbet's mind. She had done her duty, as she
understood it; and had received assurances which she was only too
glad to believe fondly with all the tender faith of her heart.
Whatever came to pass, Ralph's love would still be hers; nor was he
unwarned of what might come to pass in some dread future day. So she
shut her eyes to what might be in store for her (and, after all, the
chances were immeasurably in her favour); and she bent herself with
her whole strength into enjoying the present. Day by day Mr.
Corbet's spirits flagged. He was, however, so generally uniform in
the tenor of his talk--never very merry, and always avoiding any
subject that might call out deep feeling either on his own or any one
else's part, that few people were aware of his changes of mood.
Ellinor felt them, though she would not acknowledge them: it was
bringing her too much face to face with the great terror of her life.
One morning he announced the fact of his brother's approaching
marriage; the wedding was hastened on account of some impending event
in the duke's family; and the home letter he had received that day
was to bid his presence at Stokely Castle, and also to desire him to
be at home by a certain time not very distant, in order to look over
the requisite legal papers, and to give his assent to some of them.
He gave many reasons why this unlooked-for departure of his was
absolutely necessary; but no one doubted it. He need not have
alleged such reiterated excuses. The truth was, he was restrained
and uncomfortable at Ford Bank ever since Ellinor's confidence. He
could not rightly calculate on the most desirable course for his own
interests, while his love for her was constantly being renewed by her
sweet presence. Away from her, he could judge more wisely. Nor did
he allege any false reasons for his departure; but the sense of
relief to himself was so great at his recall home, that he was afraid
of having it perceived by others; and so took the very way which, if
others had been as penetrating as himself, would have betrayed him.
Mr. Wilkins, too, had begun to feel the restraint of Ralph's grave
watchful presence. Ellinor was not strong enough to be married; nor
was the promised money forthcoming if she had been. And to have a
fellow dawdling about the house all day, sauntering into the flower-
garden, peering about everywhere, and having a kind of right to put
all manner of unexpected questions, was anything but agreeable. It
was only Ellinor that clung to his presence--clung as though some
shadow of what might happen before they met again had fallen on her
spirit. As soon as he had left the house she flew up to a spare
bedroom window, to watch for the last glimpse of the fly which was
taking him into the town. And then she kissed the part of the pane
on which his figure, waving an arm out of the carriage window, had
last appeared; and went down slowly to gather together all the things
he had last touched--the pen he had mended, the flower he had played
with, and to lock them up in the little quaint cabinet that had held
her treasures since she was a tiny child.
Miss Monro was, perhaps, very wise in proposing the translation of a
difficult part of Dante for a distraction to Ellinor. The girl went
meekly, if reluctantly, to the task set her by her good governess,
and by-and-by her mind became braced by the exertion.
Ralph's people were not very slow in discovering that something had
not gone on quite smoothly with him at Ford Bank. They knew his ways
and looks with family intuition, and could easily be certain thus
far. But not even his mother's skilfulest wiles, nor his favourite
sister's coaxing, could obtain a word or a hint; and when his father,
the squire, who had heard the opinions of the female part of the
family on this head, began, in his honest blustering way, in their
tete-a-tetes after dinner, to hope that Ralph was thinking better
than to run his head into that confounded Hamley attorney's noose,
Ralph gravely required Mr. Corbet to explain his meaning, which he
professed not to understand so worded. And when the squire had, with
much perplexity, put it into the plain terms of hoping that his son
was thinking of breaking off his engagement to Miss Wilkins, Ralph
coolly asked him if he was aware that, in that case, he should lose
all title to being a man of honour, and might have an action brought
against him for breach of promise?
Yet not the less for all this was the idea in his mind as a future
possibility.
Before very long the Corbet family moved en masse to Stokely Castle
for the wedding. Of course, Ralph associated on equal terms with the
magnates of the county, who were the employers of Ellinor's father,
and spoke of him always as "Wilkins," just as they spoke of the
butler as "Simmons." Here, too, among a class of men high above
local gossip, and thus unaware of his engagement, he learnt the
popular opinion respecting his future father-in-law; an opinion not
entirely respectful, though intermingled with a good deal of personal
liking. "Poor Wilkins," as they called him, "was sadly extravagant
for a man in his position; had no right to spend money, and act as if
he were a man of independent fortune." His habits of life were
criticised; and pity, not free from blame, was bestowed upon him for
the losses he had sustained from his late clerk's disappearance and
defalcation. But what could be expected if a man did not choose to
attend to his own business?
The wedding went by, as grand weddings do, without let or hindrance,
according to the approved pattern. A Cabinet minister honoured it
with his presence, and, being a distant relation of the Brabants,
remained for a few days after the grand occasion. During this time
he became rather intimate with Ralph Corbet; many of their tastes
were in common. Ralph took a great interest in the manner of working
out political questions; in the balance and state of parties; and had
the right appreciation of the exact qualities on which the minister
piqued himself. In return, the latter was always on the look-out for
promising young men, who, either by their capability of speech-making
or article-writing, might advance the views of his party.
Recognising the powers he most valued in Ralph, he spared no pains to
attach him to his own political set. When they separated, it was
with the full understanding that they were to see a good deal of each
other in London.
The holiday Ralph allowed himself was passing rapidly away; but,
before he returned to his chambers and his hard work, he had promised
to spend a few more days with Ellinor; and it suited him to go
straight from the duke's to Ford Bank. He left the castle soon after
breakfast--the luxurious, elegant breakfast, served by domestics who
performed their work with the accuracy and perfection of machines.
He arrived at Ford Bank before the man-servant had quite finished the
dirtier part of his morning's work, and he came to the glass-door in
his striped cotton jacket, a little soiled, and rolling up his
working apron. Ellinor was not yet strong enough to get up and go
out and gather flowers for the rooms, so those left from yesterday
were rather faded; in short, the contrast from entire completeness
and exquisite freshness of arrangement struck forcibly upon Ralph's
perceptions, which were critical rather than appreciative; and, as
his affections were always subdued to his intellect, Ellinor's lovely
face and graceful figure flying to meet him did not gain his full
approval, because her hair was dressed in an old-fashioned way, her
waist was either too long or too short, her sleeves too full or too
tight for the standard of fashion to which his eye had been
accustomed while scanning the bridesmaids and various highborn ladies
at Stokely Castle.
But, as he had always piqued himself upon being able to put on one
side all superficial worldliness in his chase after power, it did not
do for him to shrink from seeing and facing the incompleteness of
moderate means. Only marriage upon moderate means was gradually
becoming more distasteful to him.
Nor did his subsequent intercourse with Lord Bolton, the Cabinet
minister before mentioned, tend to reconcile him to early matrimony.
At Lord Bolton's house he met polished and intellectual society, and
all that smoothness in ministering to the lower wants in eating and
drinking which seems to provide that the right thing shall always be
at the right place at the right time, so that the want of it shall
never impede for an instant the feast of wit or reason; while, if he
went to the houses of his friends, men of the same college and
standing as himself, who had been seduced into early marriages, he
was uncomfortably aware of numerous inconsistencies and hitches in
their menages. Besides, the idea of the possible disgrace that might
befall the family with which he thought of allying himself haunted
him with the tenacity and also with the exaggeration of a nightmare,
whenever he had overworked himself in his search after available and
profitable knowledge, or had a fit of indigestion after the exquisite
dinners he was learning so well to appreciate.
Christmas was, of course, to be devoted to his own family; it was an
unavoidable necessity, as he told Ellinor, while, in reality, he was
beginning to find absence from his betrothed something of a relief.
Yet the wranglings and folly of his home, even blessed by the
presence of a Lady Maria, made him look forward to Easter at Ford
Bank with something of the old pleasure.
Ellinor, with the fine tact which love gives, had discovered his
annoyance at various little incongruities in the household at the
time of his second visit in the previous autumn, and had laboured to
make all as perfect as she could before his return. But she had much
to struggle against. For the first time in her life there was a
great want of ready money; she could scarcely obtain the servants'
wages; and the bill for the spring seeds was a heavy weight on her
conscience. For Miss Monro's methodical habits had taught her pupil
great exactitude as to all money matters.
Then her father's temper had become very uncertain. He avoided being
alone with her whenever he possibly could; and the consciousness of
this, and of the terrible mutual secret which was the cause of this
estrangement, were the reasons why Ellinor never recovered her pretty
youthful bloom after her illness. Of course it was to this that the
outside world attributed her changed appearance. They would shake
their heads and say, "Ah, poor Miss Wilkins! What a lovely creature
she was before that fever!"
But youth is youth, and will assert itself in a certain elasticity of
body and spirits; and at times Ellinor forgot that fearful night for
several hours together. Even when her father's averted eye brought
it all once more before her, she had learnt to form excuses and
palliations, and to regard Mr. Dunster's death as only the
consequence of an unfortunate accident. But she tried to put the
miserable remembrance entirely out of her mind; to go on from day to
day thinking only of the day, and how to arrange it so as to cause
the least irritation to her father. She would so gladly have spoken
to him on the one subject which overshadowed all their intercourse;
she fancied that by speaking she might have been able to banish the
phantom, or reduce its terror to what she believed to be the due
proportion. But her father was evidently determined to show that he
was never more to be spoken to on that subject; and all she could do
was to follow his lead on the rare occasions that they fell into
something like the old confidential intercourse. As yet, to her, he
had never given way to anger; but before her he had often spoken in a
manner which both pained and terrified her. Sometimes his eye in the
midst of his passion caught on her face of affright and dismay, and
then he would stop, and make such an effort to control himself as
sometimes ended in tears. Ellinor did not understand that both these
phases were owing to his increasing habit of drinking more than he
ought to have done. She set them down as the direct effects of a
sorely burdened conscience; and strove more and more to plan for his
daily life at home, how it should go on with oiled wheels, neither a
jerk nor a jar. It was no wonder she looked wistful, and careworn,
and old. Miss Monro was her great comfort; the total unconsciousness
on that lady's part of anything below the surface, and yet her full
and delicate recognition of all the little daily cares and trials,
made her sympathy most valuable to Ellinor, while there was no need
to fear that it would ever give Miss Monro that power of seeing into
the heart of things which it frequently confers upon imaginative
people, who are deeply attached to some one in sorrow.
There was a strong bond between Ellinor and Dixon, although they
scarcely ever exchanged a word save on the most common-place
subjects; but their silence was based on different feelings from that
which separated Ellinor from her father. Ellinor and Dixon could not
speak freely, because their hearts were full of pity for the faulty
man whom they both loved so well, and tried so hard to respect.
This was the state of the household to which Ralph Corbet came down
at Easter. He might have been known in London as a brilliant diner-
out by this time; but he could not afford to throw his life away in
fireworks; he calculated his forces, and condensed their power as
much as might be, only visiting where he was likely to meet men who
could help in his future career. He had been invited to spend the
Easter vacation at a certain country house which would be full of
such human stepping-stones; and he declined in order to keep his word
to Ellinor, and go to Ford Bank. But he could not help looking upon
himself a little in the light of a martyr to duty; and perhaps this
view of his own merits made him chafe under his future father-in-
law's irritability of manner, which now showed itself even to him.
He found himself distinctly regretting that he had suffered himself
to be engaged so early in life; and having become conscious of the
temptation and not having repelled it at once, of course it returned
and returned, and gradually obtained the mastery over him. What was
to be gained by keeping to his engagement with Ellinor? He should
have a delicate wife to look after, and even more than the common
additional expenses of married life. He should have a father-in-law
whose character at best had had only a local and provincial
respectability, which it was now daily losing by habits which were
both sensual and vulgarising; a man, too, who was strangely changing
from joyous geniality into moody surliness. Besides, he doubted if,
in the evident change in the prosperity of the family, the fortune to
be paid down on the occasion of his marriage to Ellinor could be
forthcoming. And above all, and around all, there hovered the shadow
of some unrevealed disgrace, which might come to light at any time
and involve him in it. He thought he had pretty well ascertained the
nature of this possible shame, and had little doubt it would turn out
to be that Dunster's disappearance, to America or elsewhere, had been
an arranged plan with Mr. Wilkins. Although Mr. Ralph Corbet was
capable of suspecting him of this mean crime (so far removed from the
impulsive commission of the past sin which was dragging him daily
lower and lower down), it was of a kind that was peculiarly
distasteful to the acute lawyer, who foresaw how such base conduct
would taint all whose names were ever mentioned, even by chance, in
connection with it. He used to lie miserably tossing on his
sleepless bed, turning over these things in the night season. He was
tormented by all these thoughts; he would bitterly regret the past
events that connected him with Ellinor, from the day when he first
came to read with Mr. Ness up to the present time. But when he came
down in the morning, and saw the faded Ellinor flash into momentary
beauty at his entrance into the dining-room, and when she blushingly
drew near with the one single flower freshly gathered, which it had
been her custom to place in his button-hole when he came down to
breakfast, he felt as if his better self was stronger than
temptation, and as if he must be an honest man and honourable lover,
even against his wish.
As the day wore on the temptation gathered strength. Mr. Wilkins
came down, and while he was on the scene Ellinor seemed always
engrossed by her father, who apparently cared little enough for all
her attentions. Then there was a complaining of the food, which did
not suit the sickly palate of a man who had drunk hard the night
before; and possibly these complaints were extended to the servants,
and their incompleteness or incapacity was thus brought prominently
before the eyes of Ralph, who would have preferred to eat a dry crust
in silence, or to have gone without breakfast altogether, if he could
have had intellectual conversation of some high order, to having the
greatest dainties with the knowledge of the care required in their
preparation thus coarsely discussed before him. By the time such
breakfasts were finished, Ellinor looked thirty, and her spirits were
gone for the day. It had become difficult for Ralph to contract his
mind to her small domestic interests, and she had little else to talk
to him about, now that he responded but curtly to all her questions
about himself, and was weary of professing a love which he was
ceasing to feel, in all the passionate nothings which usually make up
so much of lovers' talk. The books she had been reading were old
classics, whose place in literature no longer admitted of keen
discussion; the poor whom she cared for were all very well in their
way; and, if they could have been brought in to illustrate a theory,
hearing about them might have been of some use; but, as it was, it
was simply tiresome to hear day after day of Betty Palmer's
rheumatism and Mrs. Kay's baby's fits. There was no talking politics
with her, because she was so ignorant that she always agreed with
everything he said.
He even grew to find luncheon and Miss Monro not unpleasant varieties
to his monotonous tete-a-tetes. Then came the walk, generally to the
town to fetch Mr. Wilkins from his office; and once or twice it was
pretty evident how he had been employing his hours. One day in
particular his walk was so unsteady and his speech so thick, that
Ralph could only wonder how it was that Ellinor did not perceive the
cause; but she was too openly anxious about the headache of which her
father complained to have been at all aware of the previous self-
indulgence which must have brought it on. This very afternoon, as
ill-luck would have it, the Duke of Hinton and a gentleman whom Ralph
had met in town at Lord Bolton's rode by, and recognised him; saw
Ralph supporting a tipsy man with such quiet friendly interest as
must show all passers-by that they were previous friends. Mr. Corbet
chafed and fumed inwardly all the way home after this unfortunate
occurrence; he was in a thoroughly evil temper before they reached
Ford Bank, but he had too much self-command to let this be very
apparent. He turned into the shrubbery paths, leaving Ellinor to
take her father into the quietness of his own room, there to lie down
and shake off his headache.
Ralph walked along, ruminating in gloomy mood as to what was to be
done; how he could best extricate himself from the miserable relation
in which he had placed himself by giving way to impulse. Almost
before he was aware, a little hand stole within his folded arms, and
Ellinor's sweet sad eyes looked into his.
"I have put papa down for an hour's rest before dinner," said she.
"His head seems to ache terribly."
Ralph was silent and unsympathising, trying to nerve himself up to be
disagreeable, but finding it difficult in the face of such sweet
trust.
"Do you remember our conversation last autumn, Ellinor?" he began at
length.
Her head sunk. They were near a garden-seat, and she quietly sat
down, without speaking.
"About some disgrace which you then fancied hung over you?" No
answer. "Does it still hang over you?"
"Yes!" she whispered, with a heavy sigh.
"And your father knows this, of course?"
"Yes!" again, in the same tone; and then silence.
"I think it is doing him harm," at length Ralph went on, decidedly.
"I am afraid it is," she said, in a low tone.
"I wish you would tell me what it is," he said, a little impatiently.
"I might be able to help you about it."
"No! you could not," replied Ellinor. "I was sorry to my very heart
to tell you what I did; I did not want help; all that is past. But I
wanted to know if you thought that a person situated as I was, was
justified in marrying any one ignorant of what might happen, what I
do hope and trust never will."
"But if I don't know what you are alluding to in this mysterious way,
you must see--don't you see, love?--I am in the position of the
ignorant man whom I think you said you could not feel it right to
marry. Why don't you tell me straight out what it is?" He could not
help his irritation betraying itself in his tones and manner of
speaking. She bent a little forward, and looked full into his face,
as though to pierce to the very heart's truth of him. Then she said,
as quietly as she had ever spoken in her life,--"You wish to break
off our engagement?"
He reddened and grew indignant in a moment. "What nonsense! Just
because I ask a question and make a remark! I think your illness
must have made you fanciful, Ellinor. Surely nothing I said deserves
such an interpretation. On the contrary, have I not shown the
sincerity and depth of my affection to you by clinging to you
through--through everything?"
He was going to say "through the wearying opposition of my family,"
but he stopped short, for he knew that the very fact of his mother's
opposition had only made him the more determined to have his own way
in the first instance; and even now he did not intend to let out,
what he had concealed up to this time, that his friends all regretted
his imprudent engagement.
Ellinor sat silently gazing out upon the meadows, but seeing nothing.
Then she put her hand into his. "I quite trust you, Ralph. I was
wrong to doubt. I am afraid I have grown fanciful and silly."
He was rather put to it for the right words, for she had precisely
divined the dim thought that had overshadowed his mind when she had
looked so intently at him. But he caressed her, and reassured her
with fond words, as incoherent as lovers' words generally are.
By-and-by they sauntered homewards. When they reached the house,
Ellinor left him, and flew up to see how her father was. When Ralph
went into his own room he was vexed with himself, both for what he
had said and for what he had not said. His mental look-out was not
satisfactory.
Neither he nor Mr. Wilkins was in good humour with the world in
general at dinner-time, and it needs little in such cases to condense
and turn the lowering tempers into one particular direction. As long
as Ellinor and Miss Monro stayed in the dining-room, a sort of moody
peace had been kept up, the ladies talking incessantly to each other
about the trivial nothings of their daily life, with an instinctive
consciousness that if they did not chatter on, something would be
said by one of the gentlemen which would be distasteful to the other.
As soon as Ralph had shut the door behind them, Mr. Wilkins went to
the sideboard, and took out a bottle which had not previously made
its appearance.
"Have a little cognac?" he asked, with an assumption of carelessness,
as he poured out a wine-glassful. "It's a capital thing for the
headache; and this nasty lowering weather has given me a racking
headache all day."
"I am sorry for it," said Ralph, "for I wanted particularly to speak
to you about business--about my marriage, in fact."
"Well! speak away, I'm as clear-headed as any man, if that's what you
mean."
Ralph bowed, a little contemptuously.
"What I wanted to say was, that I am anxious to have all things
arranged for my marriage in August. Ellinor is so much better now;
in fact, so strong, that I think we may reckon upon her standing the
change to a London life pretty well."
Mr. Wilkins stared at him rather blankly, but did not immediately
speak.
"Of course I may have the deeds drawn up in which, as by previous
arrangement, you advance a certain portion of Ellinor's fortune for
the purposes therein to be assigned; as we settled last year when I
hoped to have been married in August?"
A thought flitted through Mr. Wilkins's confused brain that he should
find it impossible to produce the thousands required without having
recourse to the money lenders, who were already making difficulties,
and charging him usurious interest for the advances they had lately
made; and he unwisely tried to obtain a diminution in the sum he had
originally proposed to give Ellinor. "Unwisely," because he might
have read Ralph's character better than to suppose he would easily
consent to any diminution without good and sufficient reason being
given; or without some promise of compensating advantages in the
future for the present sacrifice asked from him. But perhaps Mr.
Wilkins, dulled as he was by wine thought he could allege a good and
sufficient reason, for he said:
"You must not be hard upon me, Ralph. That promise was made before--
before I exactly knew the state of my affairs!"
"Before Dunster's disappearance, in fact," said Mr. Corbet, fixing
his steady, penetrating eyes on Mr. Wilkins's countenance.
"Yes--exactly--before Dunster's--" mumbled out Mr. Wilkins, red and
confused, and not finishing his sentence.
"By the way," said Ralph (for with careful carelessness of manner he
thought he could extract something of the real nature of the
impending disgrace from his companion, in the state in which he then
was; and if he only knew more about this danger he could guard
against it; guard others; perhaps himself)--"By the way, have you
ever heard anything of Dunster since he went off to--America, isn't
it thought?"
He was startled beyond his power of self-control by the instantaneous
change in Mr. Wilkins which his question produced. Both started up;
Mr. Wilkins white, shaking, and trying to say something, but unable
to form a sensible sentence.
"Good God! sir, what is the matter?" said Ralph, alarmed at these
signs of physical suffering.
Mr. Wilkins sat down, and repelled his nearer approach without
speaking.
"It is nothing, only this headache which shoots through me at times.
Don't look at me, sir, in that way. It is very unpleasant to find
another man's eyes perpetually fixed upon you."
"I beg your pardon," said Ralph, coldly; his short-lived sympathy,
thus repulsed, giving way to his curiosity. But he waited for a
minute or two without daring to renew the conversation at the point
where they had stopped: whether interrupted by bodily or mental
discomfort on the part of his companion he was not quite sure. While
he hesitated how to begin again on the subject, Mr. Wilkins pulled
the bottle of brandy to himself and filled his glass again, tossing
off the spirit as if it had been water. Then he tried to look Mr.
Corbet full in the face, with a stare as pertinacious as he could
make it, but very different from the keen observant gaze which was
trying to read him through.
"What were we talking about?" said Ralph, at length, with the most
natural air in the world, just as if he had really been forgetful of
some half-discussed subject of interest.
"Of what you'd a d--d deal better hold your tongue about," growled
out Mr. Wilkins, in a surly thick voice.
"Sir!" said Ralph, starting to his feet with real passion at being so
addressed by "Wilkins the attorney."
"Yes," continued the latter, "I'll manage my own affairs, and allow
of no meddling and no questioning. I said so once before, and I was
not minded and bad came of it; and now I say it again. And if you're
to come here and put impertinent questions, and stare at me as you've
been doing this half-hour past, why, the sooner you leave this house
the better!"
Ralph half turned to take him at his word, and go at once; but then
he "gave Ellinor another chance," as he worded it in his thoughts;
but it was in no spirit of conciliation that he said:
"You've taken too much of that stuff, sir. You don't know what
you're saying. If you did, I should leave your house at once, never
to return."
"You think so, do you?" said Mr. Wilkins, trying to stand up, and
look dignified and sober. "I say, sir, that if you ever venture
again to talk and look as you have done to-night, why, sir, I will
ring the bell and have you shown the door by my servants. So now
you're warned, my fine fellow!" He sat down, laughing a foolish
tipsy laugh of triumph. In another minute his arm was held firmly
but gently by Ralph.
"Listen, Mr. Wilkins," he said, in a low hoarse voice. "You shall
never have to say to me twice what you have said to-night.
Henceforward we are as strangers to each other. As to Ellinor"--his
tones softened a little, and he sighed in spite of himself--"I do not
think we should have been happy. I believe our engagement was formed
when we were too young to know our own minds, but I would have done
my duty and kept to my word; but you, sir, have yourself severed the
connection between us by your insolence to-night. I, to be turned
out of your house by your servants!--I, a Corbet of Westley, who
would not submit to such threats from a peer of the realm, let him be
ever so drunk!" He was out of the room, almost out of the house,
before he had spoken the last words.
Mr. Wilkins sat still, first fiercely angry, then astonished, and
lastly dismayed into sobriety. "Corbet, Corbet! Ralph!" he called
in vain; then he got up and went to the door, opened it, looked into
the fully-lighted hall; all was so quiet there that he could hear the
quiet voices of the women in the drawing-room talking together. He
thought for a moment, went to the hat-stand, and missed Ralph's low-
crowned straw hat.
Then he sat down once more in the dining-room, and endeavoured to
make out exactly what had passed; but he could not believe that Mr.
Corbet had come to any enduring or final resolution to break off his
engagement, and he had almost reasoned himself back into his former
state of indignation at impertinence and injury, when Ellinor came
in, pale, hurried, and anxious.
"Papa! what does this mean?" said she, putting an open note into his
hand. He took up his glasses, but his hand shook so that he could
hardly read. The note was from the Parsonage, to Ellinor; only three
lines sent by Mr. Ness's servant, who had come to fetch Mr. Corbet's
things. He had written three lines with some consideration for
Ellinor, even when he was in his first flush of anger against her
father, and it must be confessed of relief at his own freedom, thus
brought about by the act of another, and not of his own working out,
which partly saved his conscience. The note ran thus:

"DEAR ELLINOR,--Words have passed between your father and me which

have obliged me to leave his house, I fear, never to return to it. I
will write more fully to-morrow. But do not grieve too much, for I
am not, and never have been, good enough for you. God bless you, my
dearest Nelly, though I call you so for the last time.--R. C."

"Papa, what is it?" Ellinor cried, clasping her hands together, as

her father sat silent, vacantly gazing into the fire, after finishing
the note.
"I don't know!" said he, looking up at her piteously; "it's the
world, I think. Everything goes wrong with me and mine: it went
wrong before THAT night--so it can't be that, can it, Ellinor?"
"Oh, papa!" said she, kneeling down by him, her face hidden on his
breast.
He put one arm languidly round her. "I used to read of Orestes and
the Furies at Eton when I was a boy, and I thought it was all a
heathen fiction. Poor little motherless girl!" said he, laying his
other hand on her head, with the caressing gesture he had been
accustomed to use when she had been a little child. "Did you love
him so very dearly, Nelly?" he whispered, his cheek against her:
"for somehow of late he has not seemed to me good enough for thee.
He has got an inkling that something has gone wrong, and he was very
inquisitive--I may say he questioned me in a relentless kind of way."
"Oh, papa, it was my doing, I'm afraid. I said something long ago
about possible disgrace."
He pushed her away; he stood up, and looked at her with the eyes
dilated, half in fear, half in fierceness, of an animal at bay; he
did not heed that his abrupt movement had almost thrown her prostrate
on the ground.
"You, Ellinor! You--you--"
"Oh, darling father, listen!" said she, creeping to his knees, and
clasping them with her hands. "I said it, as if it were a possible
case, of some one else--last August--but he immediately applied it,
and asked me if it was over me the disgrace, or shame--I forget the
words we used--hung; and what could I say?"
"Anything--anything to put him off the scent. God help me, I am a
lost man, betrayed by my child!"
Ellinor let go his knees, and covered her face. Every one stabbed at
that poor heart. In a minute or so her father spoke again.
"I don't mean what I say. I often don't mean it now. Ellinor, you
must forgive me, my child!" He stooped, and lifted her up, and sat
down, taking her on his knee, and smoothing her hair off her hot
forehead. "Remember, child, how very miserable I am, and have
forgiveness for me. He had none, and yet he must have seen I had
been drinking."
"Drinking, papa!" said Ellinor, raising her head, and looking at him
with sorrowful surprise.
"Yes. I drink now to try and forget," said he, blushing and
confused.
"Oh, how miserable we are!" cried Ellinor, bursting into tears--"how
very miserable! It seems almost as if God had forgotten to comfort
us!"
"Hush! hush!" said he. "Your mother said once she did so pray that
you might grow up religious; you must be religious, child, because
she prayed for it so often. Poor Lettice, how glad I am that you are
dead!" Here he began to cry like a child. Ellinor comforted him
with kisses rather than words. He pushed her away, after a while,
and said, sharply: "How much does he know? I must make sure of
that. How much did you tell him, Ellinor?"
"Nothing--nothing, indeed, papa, but what I told you just now!"
"Tell it me again--the exact words!"
"I will, as well as I can; but it was last August. I only said, 'Was
it right for a woman to marry, knowing that disgrace hung over her,
and keeping her lover in ignorance of it?'"
"That was all, you are sure?"
"Yes. He immediately applied the case to me--to ourselves."
"And he never wanted to know what was the nature of the threatened
disgrace?"
"Yes, he did."
"And you told him?"
"No, not a word more. He referred to the subject again today, in the
shrubbery; but I told him nothing more. You quite believe me, don't
you, papa?"
He pressed her to him, but did not speak. Then he took the note up
again, and read it with as much care and attention as he could
collect in his agitated state of mind.
"Nelly," said he, at length, "he says true; he is not good enough for
thee. He shrinks from the thought of the disgrace. Thou must stand
alone, and bear the sins of thy father."
He shook so much as he said this, that Ellinor had to put any
suffering of her own on one side, and try to confine her thoughts to
the necessity of getting her father immediately up to bed. She sat
by him till he went to sleep, and she could leave him, and go to her
own room, to forgetfulness and rest, if she could find those
priceless blessings.

CHAPTER X.

Mr. Corbet was so well known at the Parsonage by the two old
servants, that he had no difficulty, on reaching it, after his
departure from Ford Bank, in having the spare bed-chamber made ready
for him, late as it was, and in the absence of the master, who had
taken a little holiday, now that Lent and Easter were over, for the
purpose of fishing. While his room was getting ready, Ralph sent for
his clothes, and by the same messenger he despatched the little note
to Ellinor. But there was the letter he had promised her in it still
to be written; and it was almost his night's employment to say
enough, yet not too much; for, as he expressed it to himself, he was
half way over the stream, and it would be folly to turn back, for he
had given nearly as much pain both to himself and Ellinor by this
time as he should do by making the separation final. Besides, after
Mr. Wilkins's speeches that evening--but he was candid enough to
acknowledge that, bad and offensive as they had been, if they had
stood alone they might have been condoned.
His letter ran as follows:

"DEAREST ELLINOR, for dearest you are, and I think will ever be, my
judgment has consented to a step which is giving me great pain,
greater than you will readily believe. I am convinced that it is
better that we should part; for circumstances have occurred since we
formed our engagement which, although I am unaware of their exact
nature, I can see weigh heavily upon you, and have materially
affected your father's behaviour. Nay, I think, after to-night, I
may almost say have entirely altered his feelings towards me. What
these circumstances are I am ignorant, any further than that I know
from your own admission, that they may lead to some future disgrace.
Now, it may be my fault, it may be in my temperament, to be anxious,
above all things earthly, to obtain and possess a high reputation. I
can only say that it is so, and leave you to blame me for my weakness
as much as you like. But anything that might come in between me and
this object would, I own, be ill tolerated by me; the very dread of
such an obstacle intervening would paralyse me. I should become
irritable, and, deep as my affection is, and always must be, towards
you, I could not promise you a happy, peaceful life. I should be
perpetually haunted by the idea of what might happen in the way of
discovery and shame. I am the more convinced of this from my
observation of your father's altered character--an alteration which I
trace back to the time when I conjecture that the secret affairs took
place to which you have alluded. In short, it is for your sake, my
dear Ellinor, even more than for my own, that I feel compelled to
affix a final meaning to the words which your father addressed to me
last night, when he desired me to leave his house for ever. God
bless you, my Ellinor, for the last time my Ellinor. Try to forget
as soon as you can the unfortunate tie which has bound you for a time
to one so unsuitable--I believe I ought to say so unworthy of you--
as--RALPH CORBET."

Ellinor was making breakfast when this letter was given her.
According to the wont of the servants of the respective households of
the Parsonage and Ford Bank, the man asked if there was any answer.
It was only custom; for he had not been desired to do so. Ellinor
went to the window to read her letter; the man waiting all the time
respectfully for her reply. She went to the writing-table, and
wrote:

"It is all right--quite right. I ought to have thought of it all

last August. I do not think you will forget me easily, but I entreat
you never at any future time to blame yourself. I hope you will be
happy and successful. I suppose I must never write to you again:
but I shall always pray for you. Papa was very sorry last night for
having spoken angrily to you. You must forgive him--there is great
need for forgiveness in this world.--ELLINOR."

She kept putting down thought after thought, just to prolong the last
pleasure of writing to him. She sealed the note, and gave it to the
man. Then she sat down and waited for Miss Monro, who had gone to
bed on the previous night without awaiting Ellinor's return from the
dining-room.
"I am late, my dear," said Miss Monro, on coming down, "but I have a
bad headache, and I knew you had a pleasant companion." Then,
looking round, she perceived Ralph's absence.
"Mr. Corbet not down yet!" she exclaimed. And then Ellinor had to
tell her the outline of the facts so soon likely to be made public;
that Mr. Corbet and she had determined to break off their engagement;
and that Mr. Corbet had accordingly betaken himself to the Parsonage;
and that she did not expect him to return to Ford Bank. Miss Monro's
astonishment was unbounded. She kept going over and over all the
little circumstances she had noticed during the last visit, only on
yesterday, in fact, which she could not reconcile with the notion
that the two, apparently so much attached to each other but a few
hours before, were now to be for ever separated and estranged.
Ellinor sickened under the torture; which yet seemed like torture in
a dream, from which there must come an awakening and a relief. She
felt as if she could not hear any more; yet there was more to hear.
Her father, as it turned out, was very ill, and had been so all night
long; he had evidently had some kind of attack on the brain, whether
apoplectic or paralytic it was for the doctors to decide. In the
hurry and anxiety of this day of misery succeeding to misery, she
almost forgot to wonder whether Ralph were still at the Parsonage--
still in Hamley; it was not till the evening visit of the physician
that she learnt that he had been seen by Dr. Moore as he was taking
his place in the morning mail to London. Dr. Moore alluded to his
name as to a thought that would cheer and comfort the fragile girl
during her night-watch by her father's bedside. But Miss Monro stole
out after the doctor to warn him off the subject for the future,
crying bitterly over the forlorn position of her darling as she
spoke--crying as Ellinor had never yet been able to cry: though all
the time, in the pride of her sex, she was as endeavouring to
persuade the doctor it was entirely Ellinor's doing, and the wisest
and best thing she could have done, as he was not good enough for
her, only a poor barrister struggling for a livelihood. Like many
other kind-hearted people, she fell into the blunder of lowering the
moral character of those whom it is their greatest wish to exalt.
But Dr. Moore knew Ellinor too well to believe the whole of what Miss
Monro said; she would never act from interested motives, and was all
the more likely to cling to a man because he was down and
unsuccessful. No! there had been a lovers' quarrel; and it could not
have happened at a sadder time.
Before the June roses were in full bloom, Mr. Wilkins was dead. He
had left his daughter to the guardianship of Mr. Ness by some will
made years ago; but Mr. Ness had caught a rheumatic fever with his
Easter fishings, and been unable to be moved home from the little
Welsh inn where he had been staying when he was taken ill. Since his
last attack, Mr. Wilkins's mind had been much affected; he often
talked strangely and wildly; but he had rare intervals of quietness
and full possession of his senses. At one of these times he must
have written a half-finished pencil note, which his nurse found under
his pillow after his death, and brought to Ellinor. Through her
tear-blinded eyes she read the weak, faltering words:

"I am very ill. I sometimes think I shall never get better, so I

wish to ask your pardon for what I said the night before I was taken
ill. I am afraid my anger made mischief between you and Ellinor, but
I think you will forgive a dying man. If you will come back and let
all be as it used to be, I will make any apology you may require. If
I go, she will be so very friendless; and I have looked to you to
care for her ever since you first--" Then came some illegible and
incoherent writing, ending with, "From my deathbed I adjure you to
stand her friend; I will beg pardon on my knees for anything--"

And there strength had failed; the paper and pencil had been laid
aside to be resumed at some time when the brain was clearer, the hand
stronger. Ellinor kissed the letter, reverently folded it up, and
laid it among her sacred treasures, by her mother's half-finished
sewing, and a little curl of her baby sister's golden hair.
Mr. Johnson, who had been one of the trustees for Mrs. Wilkins's
marriage settlement, a respectable solicitor in the county town, and
Mr. Ness, had been appointed executors of his will, and guardians to
Ellinor. The will itself had been made several years before, when he
imagined himself the possessor of a handsome fortune, the bulk of
which he bequeathed to his only child. By her mother's marriage-
settlement, Ford Bank was held in trust for the children of the
marriage; the trustees being Sir Frank Holster and Mr. Johnson.
There were legacies to his executors; a small annuity to Miss Monro,
with the expression of a hope that it might be arranged for her to
continue living with Ellinor as long as the latter remained
unmarried; all his servants were remembered, Dixon especially, and
most liberally.
What remained of the handsome fortune once possessed by the testator?
The executors asked in vain; there was nothing. They could hardly
make out what had become of it, in such utter confusion were all the
accounts, both personal and official. Mr. Johnson was hardly
restrained by his compassion for the orphan from throwing up the
executorship in disgust. Mr. Ness roused himself from his
scholarlike abstraction to labour at the examination of books,
parchments, and papers, for Ellinor's sake. Sir Frank Holster
professed himself only a trustee for Ford Bank.
Meanwhile she went on living at Ford Bank, quite unconscious of the
state of her father's affairs, but sunk into a deep, plaintive
melancholy, which affected her looks and the tones of her voice in
such a manner as to distress Miss Monro exceedingly. It was not that
the good lady did not quite acknowledge the great cause her pupil had
for grieving--deserted by her lover, her father dead--but that she
could not bear the outward signs of how much these sorrows had told
on Ellinor. Her love for the poor girl was infinitely distressed by
seeing the daily wasting away, the constant heavy depression of
spirits, and she grew impatient of the continual pain of sympathy.
If Miss Monro could have done something to relieve Ellinor of her
woe, she would have been less inclined to scold her for giving way to
it.
The time came when Miss Monro could act; and after that, there was no
more irritation on her part. When all hope of Ellinor's having
anything beyond the house and grounds of Ford Bank was gone; when it
was proved that all the legacies bequeathed by Mr. Wilkins not one
farthing could ever be paid; when it came to be a question how far
the beautiful pictures and other objects of art in the house were not
legally the property of unsatisfied creditors, the state of her
father's affairs was communicated to Ellinor as delicately as Mr.
Ness knew how.
She was drooping over her work--she always drooped now--and she left
off sewing to listen to him, leaning her head on the arm which rested
on the table. She did not speak when he had ended his statement.
She was silent for whole minutes afterwards; he went on speaking out
of very agitation and awkwardness.
"It was all the rascal Dunster's doing, I've no doubt," said he,
trying to account for the entire loss of Mr. Wilkins's fortune.
To his surprise she lifted up her white stony face, and said slowly
and faintly, but with almost solemn calmness:
"Mr. Ness, you must never allow Mr. Dunster to be blamed for this!"
"My dear Ellinor, there can be no doubt about it. Your father
himself always referred to the losses he had sustained by Dunster's
disappearance."
Ellinor covered her face with her hands. "God forgive us all," she
said, and relapsed into the old unbearable silence. Mr. Ness had
undertaken to discuss her future plans with her, and he was obliged
to go on.
"Now, my dear child--I have known you since you were quite a little
girl, you know--we must try not to give way to feeling"--he himself
was choking; she was quite quiet--"but think what is to be done. You
will have the rent of this house, and we have a very good offer for
it--a tenant on lease of seven years at a hundred and twenty pounds a
year--"
"I will never let this house," said she, standing up suddenly, and as
if defying him.
"Not let Ford Bank! Why? I don't understand it--I can't have been
clear--Ellinor, the rent of this house is all you will have to live
on!"
"I can't help it, I can't leave this house. Oh, Mr. Ness, I can't
leave this house."
"My dear child, you shall not be hurried--I know how hardly all these
things are coming upon you (and I wish I had never seen Corbet, with
all my heart I do!)"--this was almost to himself, but she must have
heard it, for she quivered all over--"but leave this house you must.
You must eat, and the rent of this house must pay for your food; you
must dress, and there is nothing but the rent to clothe you. I will
gladly have you to stay at the Parsonage as long as ever you like;
but, in fact, the negotiations with Mr. Osbaldistone, the gentleman
who offers to take the house, are nearly completed--"
"It is my house!" said Ellinor, fiercely. "I know it is settled on
me."
"No, my dear. It is held in trust for you by Sir Frank Holster and
Mr. Johnson; you to receive all moneys and benefits accruing from
it"--he spoke gently, for he almost thought her head was turned--"but
you remember you are not of age, and Mr. Johnson and I have full
power."
Ellinor sat down, helpless.
"Leave me," she said, at length. "You are very kind, but you don't
know all. I cannot stand any more talking now," she added, faintly.
Mr. Ness bent over her and kissed her forehead, and withdrew without
another word. He went to Miss Monro.
"Well! and how did you find her?" was her first inquiry, after the
usual greetings had passed between them. "It is really quite sad to
see how she gives way; I speak to her, and speak to her, and tell her
how she is neglecting all her duties, and it does no good."
"She has had to bear a still further sorrow to-day," said Mr. Ness.
"On the part of Mr. Johnson and myself I have a very painful duty to
perform to you as well as to her. Mr. Wilkins has died insolvent. I
grieve to say there is no hope of your ever receiving any of your
annuity!"
Miss Monro looked very blank. Many happy little visions faded away
in those few moments; then she roused up and said, "I am but forty; I
have a good fifteen years of work in me left yet, thank God.
Insolvent! Do you mean he has left no money?"
"Not a farthing. The creditors may be thankful if they are fully
paid."
"And Ellinor?"
"Ellinor will have the rent of this house, which is hers by right of
her mother's settlement, to live on."
"How much will that be?"
"One hundred and twenty pounds."
Miss Monro's lips went into a form prepared for whistling. Mr. Ness
continued:
"She is at present unwilling enough to leave this house, poor girl.
It is but natural; but she has no power in the matter, even were
there any other course open to her. I can only say how glad, how
honoured, I shall feel by as long a visit as you and she can be
prevailed upon to pay me at the Parsonage."
"Where is Mr. Corbet?" said Miss Monro.
"I do not know. After breaking off his engagement he wrote me a long
letter, explanatory, as he called it; exculpatory, as I termed it. I
wrote back, curtly enough, saying that I regretted the breaking-off
of an intercourse which had always been very pleasant to me, but that
he must be aware that, with my intimacy with the family at Ford Bank,
it would be both awkward and unpleasant to all parties if he and I
remained on our previous footing. Who is that going past the window?
Ellinor riding?"
Miss Monro went to the window. "Yes! I am thankful to see her on
horseback again. It was only this morning I advised her to have a
ride!"
"Poor Dixon! he will suffer too; his legacy can no more be paid than
the others; and it is not many young ladies who will be as content to
have so old-fashioned a groom riding after them as Ellinor seems to
be."
As soon as Mr. Ness had left, Miss Monro went to her desk and wrote a
long letter to some friends she had at the cathedral town of East
Chester, where she had spent some happy years of her former life.
Her thoughts had gone back to this time even while Mr. Ness had been
speaking; for it was there her father had lived, and it was after his
death that her cares in search of a subsistence had begun. But the
recollections of the peaceful years spent there were stronger than
the remembrance of the weeks of sorrow and care; and, while Ellinor's
marriage had seemed a probable event, she had made many a little plan
of returning to her native place, and obtaining what daily teaching
she could there meet with, and the friends to whom she was now
writing had promised her their aid. She thought that as Ellinor had
to leave Ford Bank, a home at a distance might be more agreeable to
her, and she went on to plan that they should live together, if
possible, on her earnings, and the small income that would be
Ellinor's. Miss Monro loved her pupil so dearly, that, if her own
pleasure only were to be consulted, this projected life would be more
agreeable to her than if Mr. Wilkins's legacy had set her in
independence, with Ellinor away from her, married, and with interests
in which her former governess had but little part.
As soon as Mr. Ness had left her, Ellinor rang the bell, and startled
the servant who answered it by her sudden sharp desire to have the
horses at the door as soon as possible, and to tell Dixon to be ready
to go out with her.
She felt that she must speak to him, and in her nervous state she
wanted to be out on the free broad common, where no one could notice
or remark their talk. It was long since she had ridden, and much
wonder was excited by the sudden movement in kitchen and stable-yard.
But Dixon went gravely about his work of preparation, saying nothing.
They rode pretty hard till they reached Monk's Heath, six or seven
miles away from Hamley. Ellinor had previously determined that here
she would talk over the plan Mr. Ness had proposed to her with Dixon,
and he seemed to understand her without any words passing between
them. When she reined in he rode up to her, and met the gaze of her
sad eyes with sympathetic, wistful silence.
"Dixon," said she, "they say I must leave Ford Bank."
"I was afeared on it, from all I've heerd say i' the town since the
master's death."
"Then you've heard--then you know--that papa has left hardly any
money--my poor dear Dixon, you won't have your legacy, and I never
thought of that before!"
"Never heed, never heed," said he, eagerly; "I couldn't have touched
it if it had been there, for the taking it would ha' seemed too like-
-" Blood-money, he was going to say, but he stopped in time. She
guessed the meaning, though not the word he would have used.
"No, not that," said she; "his will was dated years before. But oh,
Dixon, what must I do? They will make me leave Ford Bank, I see. I
think the trustees have half let it already."
"But you'll have the rent on't, I reckon?" asked he, anxiously.
"I've many a time heerd 'em say as it was settled on the missus
first, and then on you."
"Oh, yes, it is not that; but you know, under the beech-tree--"
"Ay!" said he, heavily. "It's been oftentimes on my mind, waking,
and I think there's ne'er a night as I don't dream of it."
"But how can I leave it!" Ellinor cried. "They may do a hundred
things--may dig up the shrubbery. Oh! Dixon, I feel as if it was
sure to be found out! Oh! Dixon, I cannot bear any more blame on
papa--it will kill me--and such a dreadful thing, too!"
Dixon's face fell into the lines of habitual pain that it had always
assumed of late years whenever he was thinking or remembering
anything.
"They must ne'er ha' reason to speak ill of the dead, that's for
certain," said he. "The Wilkinses have been respected in Hamley all
my lifetime, and all my father's before me, and--surely, missy,
there's ways and means of tying tenants up from alterations both in
the house and out of it, and I'd beg the trustees, or whatever they's
called, to be very particular, if I was you, and not have a thing
touched either in the house, or the gardens, or the meadows, or the
stables. I think, wi' a word from you, they'd maybe keep me on i'
the stables, and I could look after things a bit; and the Day o'
Judgment will come at last, when all our secrets will be made known
wi'out our having the trouble and the shame o' telling 'em. I'm
getting rayther tired o' this world, Miss Ellinor."
"Don't talk so," said Ellinor, tenderly. "I know how sad it is, but,
oh! remember how I shall want a friend when you're gone, to advise me
as you have done to-day. You're not feeling ill, Dixon, are you?"
she continued, anxiously.
"No! I'm hearty enough, and likely for t' live. Father was eighty-
one, and mother above the seventies, when they died. It's only my
heart as is got to feel so heavy; and as for that matter, so is
yours, I'll be bound. And it's a comfort to us both if we can serve
him as is dead by any care of ours, for he were such a bright
handsome lad, with such a cheery face, as never should ha' known
shame."
They rode on without much more speaking. Ellinor was silently
planning for Dixon, and he, not caring to look forward to the future,
was bringing up before his fancy the time, thirty years ago, when he
had first entered the elder Mr. Wilkins's service as stable-lad, and
pretty Molly, the scullery-maid, was his daily delight. Pretty Molly
lay buried in Hamley churchyard, and few living, except Dixon, could
have gone straight to her grave.

CHAPTER XI.

In a few days Miss Monro obtained a most satisfactory reply to her

letter of inquiries as to whether a daily governess could find
employment in East Chester. For once the application seemed to have
come just at the right time. The canons were most of them married
men, with young families; those at present in residence welcomed the
idea of such instruction as Miss Monro could offer for their
children, and could almost answer for their successors in office.
This was a great step gained. Miss Monro, the daughter of a
precentor to this very cathedral, had a secret unwillingness to being
engaged as a teacher by any wealthy tradesman there; but to be
received into the canons' families, in almost any capacity, was like
going home. Moreover, besides the empty honour of the thing, there
were many small pieces of patronage in the gift of the Chapter--such
as a small house opening on to the Close, which had formerly belonged
to the verger, but which was now vacant, and was offered to Miss
Monro at a nominal rent.
Ellinor had once more sunk into her old depressed passive state; Mr.
Ness and Miss Monro, modest and undecided as they both were in
general, had to fix and arrange everything for her. Her great
interest seemed to be in the old servant Dixon, and her great
pleasure to lie in seeing him, and talking over old times; so her two
friends talked about her, little knowing what a bitter, stinging pain
her "pleasure" was. In vain Ellinor tried to plan how they could
take Dixon with them to East Chester. If he had been a woman it
would have been a feasible step; but they were only to keep one
servant, and Dixon, capable and versatile as he was, would not do for
that servant. All this was what passed through Ellinor's mind: it
is still a question whether Dixon would have felt his love of his
native place, with all its associations and remembrances, or his love
for Ellinor, the stronger. But he was not put to the proof; he was
only told that he must leave, and seeing Ellinor's extreme grief at
the idea of their separation, he set himself to comfort her by every
means in his power, reminding her, with tender choice of words, how
necessary it was that he should remain on the spot, in Mr.
Osbaldistone's service, in order to frustrate, by any small influence
he might have, every project of alteration in the garden that
contained the dreadful secret. He persisted in this view, though
Ellinor repeated, with pertinacious anxiety, the care which Mr.
Johnson had taken, in drawing up the lease, to provide against any
change or alteration being made in the present disposition of the
house or grounds.
People in general were rather astonished at the eagerness Miss
Wilkins showed to sell all the Ford Bank furniture. Even Miss Monro
was a little scandalized at this want of sentiment, although she said
nothing about it; indeed justified the step, by telling every one how
wisely Ellinor was acting, as the large, handsome, tables and chairs
would be very much out of place and keeping with the small, oddly-
shaped rooms of their future home in East Chester Close. None knew
how strong was the instinct of self-preservation, it may almost be
called, which impelled Ellinor to shake off, at any cost of present
pain, the incubus of a terrible remembrance. She wanted to go into
an unhaunted dwelling in a free, unknown country--she felt as if it
was her only chance of sanity. Sometimes she thought her senses
would not hold together till the time when all these arrangements
were ended. But she did not speak to any one about her feelings,
poor child; to whom could she speak on the subject but to Dixon? Nor
did she define them to herself. All she knew was, that she was as
nearly going mad as possible; and if she did, she feared that she
might betray her father's guilt. All this time she never cried, or
varied from her dull, passive demeanour. And they were blessed tears
of relief that she shed when Miss Monro, herself weeping bitterly,
told her to put her head out of the post-chaise window, for at the
next turning of the road they would catch the last glimpse of Hamley
church spire.
Late one October evening, Ellinor had her first sight of East Chester
Close, where she was to pass the remainder of her life. Miss Monro
had been backwards and forwards between Hamley and East Chester more
than once, while Ellinor remained at the parsonage; so she had not
only the pride of proprietorship in the whole of the beautiful city,
but something of the desire of hospitably welcoming Ellinor to their
joint future home.
"Look! the fly must take us a long round, because of our luggage; but
behind these high old walls are the canons' gardens. That high-
pitched roof, with the clumps of stonecrop on the walls near it, is
Canon Wilson's, whose four little girls I am to teach. Hark! the
great cathedral clock. How proud I used to be of its great boom when
I was a child! I thought all the other church clocks in the town
sounded so shrill and poor after that, which I considered mine
especially. There are rooks flying home to the elms in the Close. I
wonder if they are the same that used to be there when I was a girl.
They say the rook is a very long-lived bird, and I feel as if I could
swear to the way they are cawing. Ay, you may smile, Ellinor, but I
understand now those lines of Gray's you used to say so prettily -

"I feel the gales that from ye blow.

A momentary bliss bestow,
And breathe a second spring."

Now, dear, you must get out. This flagged walk leads to our front-
door; but our back rooms, which are the pleasantest, look on to the
Close, and the cathedral, and the lime-tree walk, and the deanery,
and the rookery."
It was a mere slip of a house; the kitchen being wisely placed close
to the front-door, and so reserving the pretty view for the little
dining-room, out of which a glass-door opened into a small walled-in
garden, which had again an entrance into the Close. Upstairs was a
bedroom to the front, which Miss Monro had taken for herself, because
as she said, she had old associations with the back of every house in
the High-street, while Ellinor mounted to the pleasant chamber above
the tiny drawing-room both of which looked on to the vast and solemn
cathedral, and the peaceful dignified Close. East Chester Cathedral
is Norman, with a low, massive tower, a grand, majestic nave, and a
choir full of stately historic tombs. The whole city is so quiet and
decorous a place, that the perpetual daily chants and hymns of praise
seemed to sound far and wide over the roofs of the houses. Ellinor
soon became a regular attendant at all the morning and evening
services. The sense of worship calmed and soothed her aching weary
heart, and to be punctual to the cathedral hours she roused and
exerted herself, when probably nothing else would have been
sufficient to this end.
By-and-by Miss Monro formed many acquaintances; she picked up, or was
picked up by, old friends, and the descendants of old friends. The
grave and kindly canons, whose children she taught, called upon her
with their wives, and talked over the former deans and chapters, of
whom she had both a personal and traditional knowledge, and as they
walked away and talked about her silent delicate-looking friend Miss
Wilkins, and perhaps planned some little present out of their
fruitful garden or bounteous stores, which should make Miss Monro's
table a little more tempting to one apparently so frail as Ellinor,
for the household was always spoken of as belonging to Miss Monro,
the active and prominent person. By-and-by, Ellinor herself won her
way to their hearts, not by words or deeds, but by her sweet looks
and meek demeanour, as they marked her regular attendance at
cathedral service: and when they heard of her constant visits to a
certain parochial school, and of her being sometimes seen carrying a
little covered basin to the cottages of the poor, they began to try
and tempt her, with more urgent words, to accompany Miss Monro in her
frequent tea-drinkings at their houses. The old dean, that courteous
gentleman and good Christian, had early become great friends with
Ellinor. He would watch at the windows of his great vaulted library
till he saw her emerge from the garden into the Close, and then open
the deanery door, and join her, she softly adjusting the measure of
her pace to his. The time of his departure from East Chester became
a great blank in her life, although she would never accept, or allow
Miss Monro to accept, his repeated invitations to go and pay him a
visit at his country-place. Indeed, having once tasted comparative
peace again in East Chester Cathedral Close, it seemed as though she
was afraid of ever venturing out of those calm precincts. All Mr.
Ness's invitations to visit him at his parsonage at Hamley were
declined, although he was welcomed at Miss Monro's, on the occasion
of his annual visit, by every means in their power. He slept at one
of the canon's vacant houses, and lived with his two friends, who
made a yearly festivity, to the best of their means, in his honour,
inviting such of the cathedral clergy as were in residence: or, if
they failed, condescending to the town clergy. Their friends knew
well that no presents were so acceptable as those sent while Mr. Ness
was with them; and from the dean, who would send them a hamper of
choice fruit and flowers from Oxton Park, down to the curate, who
worked in the same schools as Ellinor, and who was a great fisher,
and caught splendid trout--all did their best to help them to give a
welcome to the only visitor they ever had. The only visitor they
ever had, as far as the stately gentry knew. There was one, however,
who came as often as his master could give him a holiday long enough
to undertake a journey to so distant a place; but few knew of his
being a guest at Miss Monro's, though his welcome there was not less
hearty than Mr. Ness's--this was Dixon. Ellinor had convinced him
that he could give her no greater pleasure at any time than by
allowing her to frank him to and from East Chester. Whenever he came
they were together the greater part of the day; she taking him hither
and thither to see all the sights that she thought would interest or
please him; but they spoke very little to each other during all this
companionship. Miss Monro had much more to say to him. She
questioned him right and left whenever Ellinor was out of the room.
She learnt that the house at Ford Bank was splendidly furnished, and
no money spared on the garden; that the eldest Miss Hanbury was very
well married; that Brown had succeeded to Jones in the haberdasher's
shop. Then she hesitated a little before making her next inquiry:
"I suppose Mr. Corbet never comes to the Parsonage now?"
"No, not he. I don't think as how Mr. Ness would have him; but they
write letters to each other by times. Old Job--you'll recollect old
Job, ma'am, he that gardened for Mr Ness, and waited in the parlour
when there was company--did say as one day he heerd them speaking
about Mr. Corbet; and he's a grand counsellor now--one of them as
goes about at assize-time, and speaks in a wig."
"A barrister, you mean," said Miss Monro.
"Ay; and he's something more than that, though I can't rightly
remember what,"
Ellinor could have told them both. They had The Times lent to them
on the second day after publication by one of their friends in the
Close, and Ellinor, watching till Miss Monro's eyes were otherwise
engaged, always turned with trembling hands and a beating heart to
the reports of the various courts of law. In them she found--at
first rarely--the name she sought for, the name she dwelt upon, as if
every letter were a study. Mr. Losh and Mr. Duncombe appeared for
the plaintiff, Mr. Smythe and Mr. Corbet for the defendant. In a
year or two that name appeared more frequently, and generally took
the precedence of the other, whatever it might be; then on special
occasions his speeches were reported at full length, as if his words
were accounted weighty; and by-and-by she saw that he had been
appointed a Queen's counsel. And this was all she ever heard or saw
about him; his once familiar name never passed her lips except in
hurried whispers to Dixon, when he came to stay with them. Ellinor
had had no idea when she parted from Mr. Corbet how total the
separation between them was henceforward to be, so much seemed left
unfinished, unexplained. It was so difficult, at first, to break
herself of the habit of constant mental reference to him; and for
many a long year she kept thinking that surely some kind fortune
would bring them together again, and all this heart-sickness and
melancholy estrangement from each other would then seem to both only
as an ugly dream that had passed away in the morning light.
The dean was an old man, but there was a canon who was older still,
and whose death had been expected by many, and speculated upon by
some, any time for ten years at least. Canon Holdsworth was too old
to show active kindness to any one; the good dean's life was full of
thoughtful and benevolent deeds. But he was taken, and the other
left. Ellinor looked out at the vacant deanery with tearful eyes,
the last thing at night, the first in the morning. But it is pretty
nearly the same with church dignitaries as with kings; the dean is
dead, long live the dean! A clergyman from a distant county was
appointed, and all the Close was astir to learn and hear every
particular connected with him. Luckily he came in at the tag-end of
one of the noble families in the peerage; so, at any rate, all his
future associates could learn with tolerable certainty that he was
forty-two years of age, married, and with eight daughters and one
son. The deanery, formerly so quiet and sedate a dwelling of the one
old man, was now to be filled with noise and merriment. Iron
railings were being placed before three windows, evidently to be the
nursery. In the summer publicity of open windows and doors, the
sound of the busy carpenters was perpetually heard all over the
Close: and by-and-by waggon-loads of furniture and carriage-loads of
people began to arrive. Neither Miss Monro nor Ellinor felt
themselves of sufficient importance or station to call on the new
comers, but they were as well acquainted with the proceedings of the
family as if they had been in daily intercourse; they knew that the
eldest Miss Beauchamp was seventeen, and very pretty, only one
shoulder was higher than the other; that she was dotingly fond of
dancing, and talked a great deal in a tete-a-tete, but not much if
her mamma was by, and never opened her lips at all if the dean was in
the room; that the next sister was wonderfully clever, and was
supposed to know all the governess could teach her, and to have
private lessons in Greek and mathematics from her father; and so on
down to the little boy at the preparatory school and the baby-girl in
arms. Moreover, Miss Monro, at any rate, could have stood an
examination as to the number of servants at the deanery, their
division of work, and the hours of their meals. Presently, a very
beautiful, haughty-looking young lady made her appearance in the
Close, and in the dean's pew. She was said to be his niece, the
orphan daughter of his brother, General Beauchamp, come to East
Chester to reside for the necessary time before her marriage, which
was to be performed in the cathedral by her uncle, the new dignitary.
But as callers at the deanery did not see this beautiful bride elect,
and as the Beauchamps had not as yet fallen into habits of intimacy
with any of their new acquaintances, very little was known of the
circumstances of this approaching wedding beyond the particulars
given above.
Ellinor and Miss Monro sat at their drawing-room window, a little
shaded by the muslin curtains, watching the busy preparations for the
marriage, which was to take place the next day. All morning long,
hampers of fruit and flowers, boxes from the railway--for by this
time East Chester had got a railway--shop messengers, hired
assistants, kept passing backwards and forwards in the busy Close.
Towards afternoon the bustle subsided, the scaffolding was up, the
materials for the next day's feast carried out of sight. It was to
be concluded that the bride elect was seeing to the packing of her
trousseau, helped by the merry multitude of cousins, and that the
servants were arranging the dinner for the day, or the breakfast for
the morrow. So Miss Monro had settled it, discussing every detail
and every probability as though she were a chief actor, instead of
only a distant, uncared-for spectator of the coming event. Ellinor
was tired, and now that there was nothing interesting going on, she
had fallen back to her sewing, when she was startled by Miss Memo's
exclamation:
"Look, look! here are two gentlemen coming along the lime-tree walk!
it must be the bridegroom and his friend." Out of much sympathy, and
some curiosity, Ellinor bent forward, and saw, just emerging from the
shadow of the trees on to the full afternoon sunlit pavement, Mr.
Corbet and another gentleman; the former changed, worn, aged, though
with still the same fine intellectual face, leaning on the arm of the
younger taller man, and talking eagerly. The other gentleman was
doubtless the bridegroom, Ellinor said to herself; and yet her
prophetic heart did not believe her words. Even before the bright
beauty at the deanery looked out of the great oriel window of the
drawing-room, and blushed, and smiled, and kissed her hand--a gesture
replied to by Mr. Corbet with much empressement, while the other man
only took off his hat, almost as if he saw her there for the first
time--Ellinor's greedy eyes watched him till he was hidden from sight
in the deanery, unheeding Miss Monro's eager incoherent sentences, in
turn entreating, apologising, comforting, and upbraiding. Then she
slowly turned her painful eyes upon Miss Monro's face, and moved her
lips without a sound being heard, and fainted dead away. In all her
life she had never done so before, and when she came round she was
not like herself; in all probability the persistence and wilfulness
she, who was usually so meek and docile, showed during the next
twenty-four hours, was the consequence of fever. She resolved to be
present at the wedding; numbers were going; she would be unseen,
unnoticed in the crowd; but whatever befell, go she would, and
neither the tears nor the prayers of Miss Monro could keep her back.
She gave no reason for this determination; indeed, in all probability
she had none to give; so there was no arguing the point. She was
inflexible to entreaty, and no one had any authority over her,
except, perhaps, distant Mr. Ness. Miss Monro had all sorts of
forebodings as to the possible scenes that might come to pass. But
all went on as quietly as though the fullest sympathy pervaded every
individual of the great numbers assembled. No one guessed that the
muffled, veiled figure, sitting in the shadow behind one of the great
pillars, was that of one who had once hoped to stand at the altar
with the same bridegroom, who now cast tender looks at the beautiful
bride; her veil white and fairy-like, Ellinor's black and shrouding
as that of any nun.
Already Mr. Corbet's name was known through the country as that of a
great lawyer; people discussed his speeches and character far and
wide; and the well-informed in legal gossip spoke of him as sure to
be offered a judgeship at the next vacancy. So he, though grave, and
middle-aged, and somewhat grey, divided attention and remark with his
lovely bride, and her pretty train of cousin bridesmaids. Miss Monro
need not have feared for Ellinor: she saw and heard all things as in
a mist--a dream; as something she had to go through, before she could
waken up to a reality of brightness in which her youth, and the hopes
of her youth, should be restored, and all these weary years of
dreaminess and woe should be revealed as nothing but the nightmare of
a night. She sat motionless enough, still enough, Miss Monro by her,
watching her as intently as a keeper watches a madman, and with the
same purpose--to prevent any outburst even by bodily strength, if
such restraint be needed. When all was over; when the principal
personages of the ceremony had filed into the vestry to sign their
names; when the swarm of townspeople were going out as swiftly as
their individual notions of the restraints of the sacred edifice
permitted; when the great chords of the "Wedding March" clanged out
from the organ, and the loud bells pealed overhead--Ellinor laid her
hand in Miss Monro's. "Take me home," she said softly. And Miss
Monro led her home as one leads the blind.

CHAPTER XII.

There are some people who imperceptibly float away from their youth
into middle age, and thence pass into declining life with the soft
and gentle motion of happy years. There are others who are whirled,
in spite of themselves, down dizzy rapids of agony away from their
youth at one great bound, into old age with another sudden shock; and
thence into the vast calm ocean where there are no shore-marks to
tell of time.
This last, it seemed, was to be Ellinor's lot. Her youth had gone in
a single night, fifteen years ago, and now she appeared to have
become an elderly woman; very still and hopeless in look and
movement, but as sweet and gentle in speech and smile as ever she had
been in her happiest days. All young people, when they came to know
her, loved her dearly, though at first they might call her dull, and
heavy to get on with; and as for children and old people, her ready
watchful sympathy in their joys as well as their sorrows was an
unfailing passage to their hearts. After the first great shock of
Mr. Corbet's marriage was over, she seemed to pass into a greater
peace than she had known for years; the last faint hope of happiness
was gone; it would, perhaps, be more accurate to say, of the bright
happiness she had planned for herself in her early youth.
Unconsciously, she was being weaned from self-seeking in any shape,
and her daily life became, if possible, more innocent and pure and
holy. One of the canons used to laugh at her for her constant
attendance at all the services, and for her devotion to good works,
and call her always the reverend sister. Miss Monro was a little
annoyed at this faint clerical joke; Ellinor smiled quietly. Miss
Monro disapproved of Ellinor's grave ways and sober severe style of
dress.
"You may be as good as you like, my dear, and yet go dressed in some
pretty colour, instead of those perpetual blacks and greys, and then
there would be no need for me to be perpetually telling people you
are only four-and-thirty (and they don't believe me, though I tell
them so till I am black in the face). Or, if you would but wear a
decent-shaped bonnet, instead of always wearing those of the poky
shape in fashion when you were seventeen."
The old canon died, and some one was to he appointed in his stead.
These clerical preferments and appointments were the all-important
interests to the inhabitants of the Close, and the discussion of
probabilities came up invariably if any two met together, in street
or house, or even in the very cathedral itself. At length it was
settled, and announced by the higher powers. An energetic, hard-
working clergyman from a distant part of the diocese, Livingstone by
name, was to have the vacant canonry.
Miss Monro said that the name was somehow familiar to her, and by
degrees she recollected the young curate who had come to inquire
after Ellinor in that dreadful illness she had had at Hamley in the
year 1829. Ellinor knew nothing of that visit; no more than Miss
Monro did of what had passed between the two before that anxious
night. Ellinor just thought it possible it might be the same Mr.
Livingstone, and would rather it were not, because she did not feel
as if she could bear the frequent though not intimate intercourse she
must needs have, if such were the case, with one so closely
associated with that great time of terror which she was striving to
bury out of sight by every effort in her power. Miss Monro, on the
contrary, was busy weaving a romance for her pupil; she thought of
the passionate interest displayed by the fair young clergyman fifteen
years ago, and believed that occasionally men could be constant, and
hoped that if Mr. Livingstone were the new canon, he might prove the
rara avis which exists but once in a century. He came, and it was
the same. He looked a little stouter, a little older, but had still
the gait and aspect of a young man. His smooth fair face was
scarcely lined at all with any marks of care; the blue eyes looked so
kindly and peaceful, that Miss Monro could scarcely fancy they were
the same which she had seen fast filling with tears; the bland calm
look of the whole man needed the ennoblement of his evident
devoutness to be raised into the type of holy innocence which some of
the Romanists call the "sacerdotal face." His entire soul was in his
work, and he looked as little likely to step forth in the character
of either a hero of romance or a faithful lover as could be imagined.
Still Miss Monro was not discouraged; she remembered the warm,
passionate feeling she had once seen break through the calm exterior,
and she believed that what had happened once might occur again.
Of course, while all eyes were directed on the new canon, he had to
learn who the possessors of those eyes were one by one; and it was
probably some time before the idea came into his mind that Miss
Wilkins, the lady in black, with the sad pale face, so constant an
attendant at service, so regular a visitor at the school, was the
same Miss Wilkins as the bright vision of his youth. It was her
sweet smile at a painstaking child that betrayed her--if, indeed,
betrayal it might be called where there was no wish or effort to
conceal anything. Canon Livingstone left the schoolroom almost
directly, and, after being for an hour or so in his house, went out
to call on Mrs. Randall, the person who knew more of her neighbours'
affairs than any one in East Chester.
The next day he called on Miss Wilkins herself. She would have been
very glad if he had kept on in his ignorance; it was so keenly
painful to be in the company of one the sight of whom, even at a
distance, had brought her such a keen remembrance of past misery; and
when told of his call, as she was sitting at her sewing in the
dining-room, she had to nerve herself for the interview before going
upstairs into the drawing-room, where he was being entertained by
Miss Monro with warm demonstrations of welcome. A little contraction
of the brow, a little compression of the lips, an increased pallor on
Ellinor's part, was all that Miss Monro could see in her, though she
had put on her glasses with foresight and intention to observe. She
turned to the canon; his colour had certainly deepened as he went
forwards with out-stretched hand to meet Ellinor. That was all that
was to be seen; but on the slight foundation of that blush, Miss
Monro built many castles; and when they faded away, one after one,
she recognised that they were only baseless visions. She used to put
the disappointment of her hopes down to Ellinor's unvaried calmness
of demeanour, which might be taken for coldness of disposition; and
to her steady refusal to allow Miss Monro to invite Canon Livingstone
to the small teas they were in the habit of occasionally giving. Yet
he persevered in his calls; about once every fortnight he came, and
would sit an hour or more, looking covertly at his watch, as if as
Miss Monro shrewdly observed to herself, he did not go away at last
because he wished to do so, but because he ought. Sometimes Ellinor
was present, sometimes she was away; in this latter case Miss Monro
thought she could detect a certain wistful watching of the door every
time a noise was heard outside the room. He always avoided any
reference to former days at Hamley, and that, Miss Monro feared, was
a bad sign.
After this long uniformity of years without any event closely
touching on Ellinor's own individual life, with the one great
exception of Mr. Corbet's marriage, something happened which much
affected her. Mr. Ness died suddenly at his parsonage, and Ellinor
learnt it first from Mr. Brown, a clergyman, whose living was near
Hamley, and who had been sent for by the Parsonage servants as soon
as they discovered that it was not sleep, but death, that made their
master so late in rising.
Mr. Brown had been appointed executer by his late friend, and wrote
to tell Ellinor that after a few legacies were paid, she was to have
a life-interest in the remainder of the small property which Mr. Ness
had left, and that it would be necessary for her, as the residuary
legatee, to come to Hamley Parsonage as soon as convenient, to decide
upon certain courses of action with regard to furniture, books, &c.
Ellinor shrank from this journey, which her love and duty towards her
dead friend rendered necessary. She had scarcely left East Chester
since she first arrived there, sixteen or seventeen years ago, and
she was timorous about the very mode of travelling; and then to go
back to Hamley, which she thought never to have seen again! She
never spoke much about any feelings of her own, but Miss Monro could
always read her silence, and interpreted it into pretty just and
forcible words that afternoon when Canon Livingstone called. She
liked to talk about Ellinor to him, and suspected that he liked to
hear. She was almost annoyed this time by the comfort he would keep
giving her; there was no greater danger in travelling by railroad
than by coach, a little care about certain things was required, that
was all, and the average number of deaths by accidents on railroads
was not greater than the average number when people travelled by
coach, if you took into consideration the far greater number of
travellers. Yes! returning to the deserted scenes of one's youth was
very painful . . . Had Miss Wilkins made any provision for another
lady to take her place as visitor at the school? He believed it was
her week. Miss Monro was out of all patience at his entire calmness
and reasonableness. Later in the day she became more at peace with
him, when she received a kind little note from Mrs. Forbes, a great
friend of hers, and the mother of the family she was now teaching,
saying that Canon Livingstone had called and told her that Ellinor
had to go on a very painful journey, and that Mrs. Forbes was quite
sure Miss Monro's companionship upon it would be a great comfort to
both, and that she could perfectly be set at liberty for a fortnight
or so, for it would fall in admirably with the fact that "Jeanie was
growing tall, and the doctor had advised sea air this spring; so a
month's holiday would suit them now even better than later on." Was
this going straight to Mrs. Forbes, to whom she should herself
scarcely have liked to name it, the act of a good, thoughtful man, or
of a lover? questioned Miss Monro; but she could not answer her own
inquiry, and had to be very grateful for the deed, without accounting
for the motives.
A coach met the train at a station about ten miles from Hamley, and
Dixon was at the inn where the coach stopped, ready to receive them.
The old man was almost in tears at the sight of them again in a
familiar place. He had put on his Sunday clothes to do them honour;
and to conceal his agitation he kept up a pretended bustle about
their luggage. To the indignation of the inn-porters, who were of a
later generation, he would wheel it himself to the Parsonage, though
he broke down from fatigue once or twice on the way, and had to stand
and rest, his ladies waiting by his side, and making remarks on the
alterations of houses and the places of trees, in order to give him
ample time to recruit himself, for there was no one to wait for them
and give them a welcome to the Parsonage, which was to be their
temporary home. The respectful servants, in deep mourning, had all
prepared, and gave Ellinor a note from Mr. Brown, saying that he
purposely refrained from disturbing them that day after their long
journey, but would call on the morrow, and tell them of the
arrangements he had thought of making, always subject to Miss
Wilkins's approval.
These were simple enough; certain legal forms to be gone through, any
selection from books or furniture to be made, and the rest to be sold
by auction as speedily as convenient, as the successor to the living
might wish to have repairs and alterations effected in the old
parsonage. For some days Ellinor employed herself in business in the
house, never going out except to church. Miss Monro, on the
contrary, strolled about everywhere, noticing all the alterations in
place and people, which were never improvements in her opinion.
Ellinor had plenty of callers (her tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Osbaldistone
among others), but, excepting in rare cases--most of them belonged to
humble life--she declined to see every one, as she had business
enough on her hands: sixteen years makes a great difference in any
set of people. The old acquaintances of her father in his better
days were almost all dead or removed; there were one or two
remaining, and these Ellinor received; one or two more, old and
infirm, confined to their houses, she planned to call upon before
leaving Hamley. Every evening, when Dixon had done his work at Mr.
Osbaldistone's, he came up to the Parsonage, ostensibly to help her
in moving or packing books, but really because these two clung to
each other--were bound to each other by a bond never to be spoken
about. It was understood between them that once before Ellinor left
she should go and see the old place, Ford Bank. Not to go into the
house, though Mr. and Mrs. Osbaldistone had begged her to name her
own time for revisiting it when they and their family would be
absent, but to see all the gardens and grounds once more; a solemn,
miserable visit, which, because of the very misery it involved,
appeared to Ellinor to be an imperative duty.
Dixon and she talked together as she sat making a catalogue one
evening in the old low-browed library; the casement windows were open
into the garden, and the May showers had brought out the scents of
the new-leaved sweetbriar bush just below. Beyond the garden hedge
the grassy meadows sloped away down to the liver; the Parsonage was
so much raised that, sitting in the house, you could see over the
boundary hedge. Men with instruments were busy in the meadow.
Ellinor, pausing in her work, asked Dixon what they were doing.
"Them's the people for the new railway," said he. "Nought would
satisfy the Hamley folk but to have a railway all to themselves--
coaches isn't good enough now-a-days."
He spoke with a tone of personal offence natural to a man who had
passed all his life among horses, and considered railway-engines as
their despicable rivals, conquering only by stratagem.
By-and-by Ellinor passed on to a subject the consideration of which
she had repeatedly urged upon Dixon, and entreated him to come and
form one of their household at East Chester. He was growing old, she
thought older even in looks and feelings than in years, and she would
make him happy and comfortable in his declining years if he would but
come and pass them under her care. The addition which Mr. Ness's
bequest made to her income would enable her to do not only this, but
to relieve Miss Monro of her occupation of teaching; which, at the
years she had arrived at, was becoming burdensome. When she proposed
the removal to Dixon he shook his head.
"It's not that I don't thank you, and kindly, too; but I'm too old to
go chopping and changing."
"But it would be no change to come back to me, Dixon," said Ellinor.
"Yes, it would. I were born i' Hamley, and it's i' Hamley I reckon
to die."
On her urging him a little more, it came out that he had a strong
feeling that if he did not watch the spot where the dead man lay
buried, the whole would be discovered; and that this dread of his had
often poisoned the pleasure of his visit to East Chester.
"I don't rightly know how it is, for I sometimes think if it wasn't
for you, missy, I should be glad to have made it all clear before I
go; and yet at times I dream, or it comes into my head as I lie awake
with the rheumatics, that some one is there, digging; or that I hear
'em cutting down the tree; and then I get up and look out of the loft
window--you'll mind the window over the stables, as looks into the
garden, all covered over wi' the leaves of the jargonelle pear-tree?
That were my room when first I come as stable-boy, and tho' Mr.
Osbaldistone would fain give me a warmer one, I allays tell him I
like th' old place best. And by times I've getten up five or six
times a-night to make sure as there was no one at work under the
tree."
Ellinor shivered a little. He saw it, and restrained himself in the
relief he was receiving from imparting his superstitious fancies.
"You see, missy, I could never rest a-nights if I didn't feel as if I
kept the secret in my hand, and held it tight day and night, so as I
could open my hand at any minute and see as it was there. No! my own
little missy will let me come and see her now and again, and I know
as I can allays ask her for what I want: and if it please God to lay
me by, I shall tell her so, and she'll see as I want for nothing.
But somehow I could ne'er bear leaving Hamley. You shall come and
follow me to my grave when my time comes."
"Don't talk so, please, Dixon," said she.
"Nay, it'll be a mercy when I can lay me down and sleep in peace:
though I sometimes fear as peace will not come to me even there." He
was going out of the room, and was now more talking to himself than
to her. "They say blood will out, and if it weren't for her part in
it, I could wish for a clear breast before I die."
She did not hear the latter part of this mumbled sentence. She was
looking at a letter just brought in and requiring an immediate
answer. It was from Mr. Brown. Notes from him were of daily
occurrence, but this contained an open letter the writing of which
was strangely familiar to her--it did not need the signature "Ralph
Corbet," to tell her whom the letter came from. For some moments she
could not read the words. They expressed a simple enough request,
and were addressed to the auctioneer who was to dispose of the rather
valuable library of the late Mr. Ness, and whose name had been
advertised in connection with the sale, in the Athenaeum, and other
similar papers. To him Mr. Corbet wrote, saying that he should be
unable to be present when the books were sold, but that he wished to
be allowed to buy in, at any price decided upon, a certain rare folio
edition of Virgil, bound in parchment, and with notes in Italian.
The book was fully described. Though no Latin scholar, Ellinor knew
the book well--remembered its look from old times, and could
instantly have laid her hand upon it. The auctioneer had sent the
request onto his employer, Mr. Brown. That gentleman applied to
Ellinor for her consent. She saw that the fact of the intended sale
must be all that Mr. Corbet was aware of, and that he could not know
to whom the books belonged. She chose out the book, and wrapped and
tied it up with trembling hands. HE might be the person to untie the
knot. It was strangely familiar to her love, after so many years, to
be brought into thus much contact with him. She wrote a short note
to Mr. Brown, in which she requested him to say, as though from
himself; and without any mention of her name, that he, as executor,
requested Mr. Corbet's acceptance of the Virgil, as a remembrance of
his former friend and tutor. Then she rang the bell, and gave the
letter and parcel to the servant.
Again alone, and Mr. Corbet's open letter on the table. She took it
up and looked at it till the letters dazzled crimson on the white
paper. Her life rolled backwards, and she was a girl again. At last
she roused herself; but instead of destroying the note--it was long
years since all her love-letters from him had been returned to the
writer--she unlocked her little writing-case again, and placed this
letter carefully down at the bottom, among the dead rose-leaves which
embalmed the note from her father, found after his death under his
pillow, the little golden curl of her sister's, the half-finished
sewing of her mother.
The shabby writing-case itself was given her by her father long ago,
and had since been taken with her everywhere. To be sure, her
changes of place had been but few; but if she had gone to Nova
Zembla, the sight of that little leather box on awaking from her
first sleep, would have given her a sense of home. She locked the
case up again, and felt all the richer for that morning.
A day or two afterwards she left Hamley. Before she went she
compelled herself to go round the gardens and grounds of Ford Bank.
She had made Mrs. Osbaldistone understand that it would be painful
for her to re-enter the house; but Mr. Osbaldistone accompanied her
in her walk.
"You see how literally we have obeyed the clause in the lease which
ties us out from any alterations," said he, smiling. "We are living
in a tangled thicket of wood. I must confess that I should have
liked to cut down a good deal; but we do not do even the requisite
thinnings without making the proper application for leave to Mr.
Johnson. In fact, your old friend Dixon is jealous of every pea-
stick the gardener cuts. I never met with so faithful a fellow. A
good enough servant, too, in his way; but somewhat too old-fashioned
for my wife and daughters, who complain of his being surly now and
then."
"You are not thinking of parting with him?" said Ellinor, jealous for
Dixon.
"Oh, no; he and I are capital friends. And I believe Mrs.
Osbaldistone herself would never consent to his leaving us. But some
ladies, you know, like a little more subserviency in manner than our
friend Dixon can boast."
Ellinor made no reply. They were entering the painted flower garden,
hiding the ghastly memory. She could not speak. She felt as if,
with all her striving, she could not move--just as one does in a
nightmare--but she was past the place even as this terror came to its
acme; and when she came to herself, Mr. Osbaldistone was still
blandly talking, and saying -
"It is now a reward for our obedience to your wishes, Miss Wilkins,
for if the projected railway passes through the ash-field yonder we
should have been perpetually troubled with the sight of the trains;
indeed, the sound would have been much more distinct than it will be
now coming through the interlacing branches. Then you will not go
in, Miss Wilkins?" Mrs. Osbaldistone desired me to say how happy--
Ah! I can understand such feelings--Certainly, certainly; it is so
much the shortest way to the town, that we elder ones always go
through the stable-yard; for young people, it is perhaps not quite so
desirable. Ha! Dixon," he continued, "on the watch for the Miss
Ellinor we so often hear of! This old man," he continued to Ellinor,
"is never satisfied with the seat of our young ladies, always
comparing their way of riding with that of a certain missy--"
"I cannot help it, sir; they've quite a different style of hand, and
sit all lumpish-like. Now, Miss Ellinor, there -"
"Hush, Dixon," she said, suddenly aware of why the old servant was
not popular with his mistress. "I suppose I may be allowed to ask
for Dixon's company for an hour or so; we have something to do
together before we leave."
The consent given, the two walked away, as by previous appointment,
to Hamley churchyard, where he was to point out to her the exact spot
where he wished to be buried. Trampling over the long, rank grass,
but avoiding passing directly over any of the thickly-strewn graves,
he made straight for one spot--a little space of unoccupied ground
close by, where Molly, the pretty scullery-maid, lay:

Sacred to the Memory of

MARY GREAVES.
Born 1797. Died 1818.
"We part to meet again."

"I put this stone up over her with my first savings," said he,
looking at it; and then, pulling out his knife, he began to clean out
the letters. "I said then as I would lie by her. And it'll be a
comfort to think you'll see me laid here. I trust no one'll be so
crabbed as to take a fancy to this 'ere spot of ground."
Ellinor grasped eagerly at the only pleasure which her money enabled
her to give to the old man: and promised him that she would take
care and buy the right to that particular piece of ground. This was
evidently a gratification Dixon had frequently yearned after; he kept
saying, "I'm greatly obleeged to ye, Miss Ellinor. I may say I'm
truly obleeged." And when he saw them off by the coach the next day,
his last words were, "I cannot justly say how greatly I'm obleeged to
you for that matter of the churchyard." It was a much more easy
affair to give Miss Monro some additional comforts; she was as
cheerful as ever; still working away at her languages in any spare
time, but confessing that she was tired of the perpetual teaching in
which her life had been spent during the last thirty years. Ellinor
was now enabled to set her at liberty from this, and she accepted the
kindness from her former pupil with as much simple gratitude as that
with which a mother receives a favour from a child. "If Ellinor were
but married to Canon Livingstone, I should be happier than I have
ever been since my father died," she used to say to herself in the
solitude of her bedchamber, for talking aloud had become her wont in
the early years of her isolated life as a governess. "And yet," she
went on, "I don't know what I should do without her; it is lucky for
me that things are not in my hands, for a pretty mess I should make
of them, one way or another. Dear! how old Mrs. Cadogan used to hate
that word 'mess,' and correct her granddaughters for using it right
before my face, when I knew I had said it myself only the moment
before! Well! those days are all over now. God be thanked!"
In spite of being glad that "things were not in her hands" Miss Monro
tried to take affairs into her charge by doing all she could to
persuade Ellinor to allow her to invite the canon to their "little
sociable teas." The most provoking part was, that she was sure he
would have come if he had been asked; but she could never get leave
to do so. "Of course no man could go on for ever and ever without
encouragement," as she confided to herself in a plaintive tone of
voice; and by-and-by many people were led to suppose that the
bachelor canon was paying attention to Miss Forbes, the eldest
daughter of the family to which the delicate Jeanie belonged. It
was, perhaps, with the Forbeses that both Miss Monro and Ellinor were
the most intimate of all the families in East Chester. Mrs. Forbes
was a widow lady of good means, with a large family of pretty,
delicate daughters. She herself belonged to one of the great houses
in --shire, but had married into Scotland; so, after her husband's
death, it was the most natural thing in the world that she should
settle in East Chester; and one after another of her daughters had
become first Miss Monro's pupil and afterwards her friend. Mrs.
Forbes herself had always been strongly attracted by Ellinor, but it
was long before she could conquer the timid reserve by which Miss
Wilkins was hedged round. It was Miss Monro, who was herself
incapable of jealousy, who persevered in praising them to one
another, and in bringing them together; and now Ellinor was as
intimate and familiar in Mrs. Forbes's household as she ever could be
with any family not her own.
Mrs. Forbes was considered to be a little fanciful as to illness; but
it was no wonder, remembering how many sisters she had lost by
consumption. Miss Monro had often grumbled at the way in which her
pupils were made irregular for very trifling causes. But no one so
alarmed as she, when, in the autumn succeeding Mr. Ness's death, Mrs.
Forbes remarked to her on Ellinor's increased delicacy of appearance,
and shortness of breathing. From that time forwards she worried
Ellinor (if any one so sweet and patient could ever have been
worried) with respirators and precautions. Ellinor submitted to all
her friend's wishes and cares, sooner than make her anxious, and
remained a prisoner in the house through the whole of November. Then
Miss Monro's anxiety took another turn. Ellinor's appetite and
spirits failed her--not at all an unnatural consequence of so many
weeks' confinement to the house. A plan was started, quite suddenly,
one morning in December, that met with approval from everyone but
Ellinor, who was, however, by this time too languid to make much
resistance.
Mrs. Forbes and her daughters were going to Rome for three or four
months, so as to avoid the trying east winds of spring; why should
not Miss Wilkins go with them? They urged it, and Miss Monro urged
it, though with a little private sinking of the heart at the idea of
the long separation from one who was almost like a child to her.
Ellinor was, as it were, lifted off her feet and borne away by the
unanimous opinion of others--the doctor included--who decided that
such a step was highly desirable; if not absolutely necessary. She
knew that she had only a life interest both in her father's property
and in that bequeathed to her by Mr. Ness. Hitherto she had not felt
much troubled by this, as she had supposed that in the natural course
of events she should survive Miss Monro and Dixon, both of whom she
looked upon as dependent upon her. All she had to bequeath to the
two was the small savings, which would not nearly suffice for both
purposes, especially considering that Miss Monro had given up her
teaching, and that both she and Dixon were passing into years.
Before Ellinor left England she had made every arrangement for the
contingency of her death abroad that Mr. Johnson could suggest. She
had written and sent a long letter to Dixon; and a shorter one was
left in charge of Canon Livingstone (she dared not hint at the
possibility of her dying to Miss Monro) to be sent to the old man.
As they drove out of the King's Cross station, they passed a
gentleman's carriage entering. Ellinor saw a bright, handsome lady,
a nurse, and baby inside, and a gentleman sitting by them whose face
she could never forget. It was Mr. Corbet taking his wife and child
to the railway. They were going on a Christmas visit to East Chester
deanery. He had been leaning back, not noticing the passers-by, not
attending to the other inmates of the carriage, probably absorbed in
the consideration of some law case. Such were the casual glimpses
Ellinor had of one with whose life she had once thought herself bound
up.
Who so proud as Miss Monro when a foreign letter came? Her
correspondent was not particularly graphic in her descriptions, nor
were there any adventures to be described, nor was the habit of mind
of Ellinor such as to make her clear and definite in her own
impressions of what she saw, and her natural reserve kept her from
being fluent in communicating them even to Miss Monro. But that lady
would have been pleased to read aloud these letters to the assembled
dean and canons, and would not have been surprised if they had
invited her to the chapter-house for that purpose. To her circle of
untravelled ladies, ignorant of Murray, but laudably desirous of
information, all Ellinor's historical reminiscences and rather formal
details were really interesting. There was no railroad in those days
between Lyons and Marseilles, so their progress was slow, and the
passage of letters to and fro, when they had arrived in Rome, long
and uncertain. But all seemed going on well. Ellinor spoke of
herself as in better health; and Canon Livingstone (between whom and
Miss Monro great intimacy had sprung up since Ellinor had gone away,
and Miss Monro could ask him to tea) confirmed this report of Miss
Wilkins's health from a letter which he had received from Mrs.
Forbes. Curiosity about that letter was Miss Monro's torment. What
could they have had to write to each other about? It was a very odd
proceeding; although the Livingstones and Forbeses were distantly
related, after the manner of Scotland. Could it have been that he
had offered to Euphemia, after all, and that her mother had answered;
or, possibly, there was a letter from Effie herself, enclosed. It
was a pity for Miss Monro's peace of mind that she did not ask him
straight away. She would then have learnt what Canon Livingstone had
no thought of concealing, that Mrs. Forbes had written solely to give
him some fuller directions about certain charities than she had had
time to think about in the hurry of starting. As it was, and when, a
little later on, she heard him speak of the possibility of his going
himself to Rome, as soon as his term of residence was over, in time
for the Carnival, she gave up her fond project in despair, and felt
very much like a child whose house of bricks had been knocked down by
the unlucky waft of some passing petticoat.
Meanwhile, the entire change of scene brought on the exquisite
refreshment of entire change of thought. Ellinor had not been able
so completely to forget her past life for many years; it was like a
renewing of her youth; cut so suddenly short by the shears of Fate.
Ever since that night, she had had to rouse herself on awakening in
the morning into a full comprehension of the great cause she had for
much fear and heavy grief. Now, when she wakened in her little room,
fourth piano, No. 36, Babuino, she saw the strange, pretty things
around her, and her mind went off into pleasant wonder and
conjecture, happy recollections of the day before, and pleasant
anticipations of the day to come. Latent in Ellinor was her father's
artistic temperament; everything new and strange was a picture and a
delight; the merest group in the street, a Roman facchino, with his
cloak draped over his shoulder, a girl going to market or carrying
her pitcher back from the fountain, everything and every person that
presented it or himself to her senses, gave them a delicious shock,
as if it were something strangely familiar from Pinelli, but unseen
by her mortal eyes before. She forgot her despondency, her ill-
health disappeared as if by magic; the Misses Forbes, who had taken
the pensive, drooping invalid as a companion out of kindness of
heart, found themselves amply rewarded by the sight of her amended
health, and her keen enjoyment of everything, and the half-quaint,
half naive expressions of her pleasure.
So March came round; Lent was late that year. The great nosegays of
violets and camellias were for sale at the corner of the Condotti,
and the revellers had no difficulty in procuring much rarer flowers
for the belles of the Corso. The embassies had their balconies; the
attaches of the Russian Embassy threw their light and lovely presents
at every pretty girl, or suspicion of a pretty girl, who passed
slowly in her carriage, covered over with her white domino, and
holding her wire mask as a protection to her face from the showers of
lime confetti, which otherwise would have been enough to blind her;
Mrs. Forbes had her own hired balcony, as became a wealthy and
respectable Englishwoman. The girls had a great basket full of
bouquets with which to pelt their friends in the crowd below; a store
of moccoletti lay piled on the table behind, for it was the last day
of Carnival, and as soon as dusk came on the tapers were to be
lighted, to be as quickly extinguished by every means in everyone's
power. The crowd below was at its wildest pitch; the rows of stately
contadini alone sitting immovable as their possible ancestors, the
senators who received Brennus and his Gauls. Masks and white
dominoes, foreign gentlemen, and the riffraff of the city, slow-
driving carriages, showers of flowers, most of them faded by this
time, everyone shouting and struggling at that wild pitch of
excitement which may so soon turn into fury. The Forbes girls had
given place at the window to their mother and Ellinor, who were
gazing half amused, half terrified, at the mad parti-coloured
movement below; when a familiar face looked up, smiling a
recognition; and "How shall I get to you?" was asked in English, by
the well-known voice of Canon Livingstone. They saw him disappear
under the balcony on which they were standing, but it was some time
before he made his appearance in their room. And when he did, he was
almost overpowered with greetings; so glad were they to see an East
Chester face.
"When did you come? Where are you? What a pity you did not come
sooner! It is so long since we have heard anything; do tell us
everything! It is three weeks since we have had any letters; those
tiresome boats have been so irregular because of the weather." "How
was everybody--Miss Monro in particular?" Ellinor asks.
He, quietly smiling, replied to their questions by slow degrees. He
had only arrived the night before, and had been hunting for them all
day; but no one could give him any distinct intelligence as to their
whereabouts in all the noise and confusion of the place, especially
as they had their only English servant with them, and the canon was
not strong in his Italian. He was not sorry he had missed all but
this last day of carnival, for he was half blinded and wholly
deafened, as it was. He was at the "Angleterre;" he had left East
Chester about a week ago; he had letters for all of them, but had not
dared to bring them through the crowd for fear of having his pocket
picked. Miss Monro was very well, but very uneasy at not having
heard from Ellinor for so long; the irregularity of the boats must be
telling both ways, for their English friends were full of wonder at
not hearing from Rome. And then followed some well-deserved abuse of
the Roman post, and some suspicion of the carelessness with which
Italian servants posted English letters. All these answers were
satisfactory enough, yet Mrs. Forbes thought she saw a latent
uneasiness in Canon Livingstone's manner, and fancied once or twice
that he hesitated in replying to Ellinor's questions. But there was
no being quite sure in the increasing darkness, which prevented
countenances from being seen; nor in the constant interruptions and
screams which were going on in the small crowded room, as wafting
handkerchiefs, puffs of wind, or veritable extinguishers, fastened to
long sticks, and coming from nobody knew where, put out taper after
taper as fast as they were lighted.
"You will come home with us," said Mrs. Forbes. "I can only offer
you cold meat with tea; our cook is gone out, this being a universal
festa; but we cannot part with an old friend for any scruples as to
the commissariat."
"Thank you. I should have invited myself if you had not been good
enough to ask me."
When they had all arrived at their apartment in the Babuino (Canon
Livingstone had gone round to fetch the letters with which he was
entrusted), Mrs. Forbes was confirmed in her supposition that he had
something particular and not very pleasant to say to Ellinor, by the
rather grave and absent manner in which he awaited her return from
taking off her out-of-door things. He broke off, indeed, in his
conversation with Mrs. Forbes to go and meet Ellinor, and to lead her
into the most distant window before he delivered her letters.
"From what you said in the balcony yonder, I fear you have not
received your home letters regularly?"
"No!" replied she, startled and trembling, she hardly knew why.
"No more has Miss Monro heard from you; nor, I believe, has some one
else who expected to hear. Your man of business--I forget his name."
"My man of business! Something has gone wrong, Mr. Livingstone.
Tell me--I want to know. I have been expecting it--only tell me."
She sat down suddenly, as white as ashes.
"Dear Miss Wilkins, I'm afraid it is painful enough, but you are
fancying it worse than it is. All your friends are quite well; but
an old servant--"
"Well!" she said, seeing his hesitation, and leaning forwards and
griping at his arm.
"Is taken up on a charge of manslaughter or murder. Oh! Mrs. Forbes,
come here!"
For Ellinor had fainted, falling forwards on the arm she had held.
When she came round she was lying half undressed on her bed; they
were giving her tea in spoonfuls.
"I must get up," she moaned. "I must go home."
"You must lie still," said Mrs. Forbes, firmly.
"You don't know. I must go home," she repeated; and she tried to sit
up, but fell back helpless. Then she did not speak, but lay and
thought. "Will you bring me some meat?" she whispered. "And some
wine?" They brought her meat and wine; she ate, though she was
choking. "Now, please, bring me my letters, and leave me alone; and
after that I should like to speak to Canon Livingstone. Don't let
him go, please. I won't be long--half an hour, I think. Only let me
be alone."
There was a hurried feverish sharpness in her tone that made Mrs.
Forbes very anxious, but she judged it best to comply with her
requests.
The letters were brought, the lights were arranged so that she could
read them lying on her bed; and they left her. Then she got up and
stood on her feet, dizzy enough, her arms clasped at the top of her
head, her eyes dilated and staring as if looking at some great
horror. But after a few minutes she sat down suddenly, and began to
read. Letters were evidently missing. Some had been sent by an
opportunity that had been delayed on the journey, and had not yet
arrived in Rome. Others had been despatched by the post, but the
severe weather, the unusual snow, had, in those days, before the
railway was made between Lyons and Marseilles, put a stop to many a
traveller's plans, and had rendered the transmission of the mail
extremely uncertain; so, much of that intelligence which Miss Monro
had evidently considered as certain to be known to Ellinor was
entirely matter of conjecture, and could only be guessed at from what
was told in these letters. One was from Mr. Johnson, one from Mr.
Brown, one from Miss Monro; of course the last mentioned was the
first read. She spoke of the shock of the discovery of Mr. Dunster's
body, found in the cutting of the new line of railroad from Hamley to
the nearest railway station; the body so hastily buried long ago, in
its clothes, by which it was now recognised--a recognition confirmed
by one or two more personal and indestructible things, such as his
watch and seal with his initials; of the shock to everyone, the
Osbaldistones in particular, on the further discovery of a fleam or
horse-lancet, having the name of Abraham Dixon engraved on the
handle; how Dixon had gone on Mr. Osbaldistone's business to a horse-
fair in Ireland some weeks before this, and had had his leg broken by
a kick from an unruly mare, so that he was barely able to move about
when the officers of justice went to apprehend him in Tralee.
At this point Ellinor cried out loud and shrill.
"Oh, Dixon! Dixon! and I was away enjoying myself."
They heard her cry, and came to the door, but it was bolted inside.
"Please, go away," she said; "please, go. I will be very quiet;
only, please, go."
She could not bear just then to read any more of Miss Monro's letter;
she tore open Mr. Johnson's--the date was a fortnight earlier than
Miss Monro's; he also expressed his wonder at not hearing from her,
in reply to his letter of January 9; but he added, that he thought
that her trustees had judged rightly; the handsome sum the railway
company had offered for the land when their surveyor decided on the
alteration of the line, Mr. Osbaldistone, &c. &c. She could not read
anymore; it was Fate pursuing her. Then she took the letter up again
and tried to read; but all that reached her understanding was the
fact that Mr. Johnson had sent his present letter to Miss Monro,
thinking that she might know of some private opportunity safer than
the post. Mr. Brown's was just such a letter as he occasionally sent
her from time to time; a correspondence that arose out of their
mutual regard for their dead friend Mr. Ness. It, too, had been sent
to Miss Monro to direct. Ellinor was on the point of putting it
aside entirely, when the name of Corbet caught her eye: "You will be
interested to hear that the old pupil of our departed friend, who was
so anxious to obtain the folio Virgil with the Italian notes, is
appointed the new judge in room of Mr. Justice Jenkin. At least I
conclude that Mr. Ralph Corbet, Q.C., is the same as the Virgil
fancier."
"Yes," said Ellinor, bitterly; "he judged well; it would never have
done." They were the first words of anything like reproach which she
ever formed in her own mind during all these years. She thought for
a few moments of the old times; it seemed to steady her brain to
think of them. Then she took up and finished Miss Monro's letter.
That excellent friend had done all which she thought Ellinor would
have wished without delay. She had written to Mr. Johnson, and
charged him to do everything he could to defend Dixon and to spare no
expense. She was thinking of going to the prison in the county town,
to see the old man herself, but Ellinor could perceive that all these
endeavours and purposes of Miss Monro's were based on love for her
own pupil, and a desire to set her mind at ease as far as she could,
rather than from any idea that Dixon himself could be innocent.
Ellinor put down the letters, and went to the door, then turned back,
and locked them up in her writing-case with trembling hands; and
after that she entered the drawing-room, looking liker to a ghost
than to a living woman.
"Can I speak to you for a minute alone?" Her still, tuneless voice
made the words into a command. Canon Livingstone arose and followed
her into the little dining-room. "Will you tell me all you know--all
you have heard about my--you know what?"
"Miss Monro was my informant--at least at first--it was in the Times
the day before I left. Miss Monro says it could only have been done
in a moment of anger if the old servant is really guilty; that he was
as steady and good a man as she ever knew, and she seems to have a
strong feeling against Mr. Dunster, as always giving your father much
unnecessary trouble; in fact, she hints that his disappearance at the
time was supposed to be the cause of a considerable loss of property
to Mr. Wilkins."
"No!" said Ellinor, eagerly, feeling that some justice ought to be
done to the dead man; and then she stopped short, fearful of saying
anything that should betray her full knowledge. "I mean this," she
went on; "Mr. Dunster was a very disagreeable man personally--and
papa--we none of us liked him; but he was quite honest--please
remember that."
The canon bowed, and said a few acquiescing words. He waited for her
to speak again.
"Miss Monro says she is going to see Dixon in--"
"Oh, Mr. Livingstone, I can't bear it!"
He let her alone, looking at her pitifully, as she twisted and wrung
her hands together in her endeavour to regain the quiet manner she
had striven to maintain through the interview. She looked up at him
with a poor attempt at an apologetic smile:
"It is so terrible to think of that good old man in prison!"
"You do not believe him guilty!" said Canon Livingstone, in some
surprise. "I am afraid, from all I heard and read, there is but
little doubt that he did kill the man; I trust in some moment of
irritation, with no premeditated malice."
Ellinor shook her head.
"How soon can I get to England?" asked she. "I must start at once."
"Mrs. Forbes sent out while you were lying down. I am afraid there
is no boat to Marseilles till Thursday, the day after to-morrow."
"But I must go sooner!" said Ellinor, starting up. "I must go;
please help me. He may be tried before I can get there!"
"Alas! I fear that will be the case, whatever haste you make. The
trial was to come on at the Hellingford Assizes, and that town stands
first on the Midland Circuit list. To-day is the 27th of February;
the assizes begin on the 7th of March."
"I will start to-morrow morning early for Civita; there may be a boat
there they do not know of here. At any rate, I shall be on my way.
If he dies, I must die too. Oh! I don't know what I am saying, I am
so utterly crushed down! It would be such a kindness if you would go
away, and let no one come to me. I know Mrs. Forbes is so good, she
will forgive me. I will say good-by to you all before I go to-morrow
morning; but I must think now."
For one moment he stood looking at her as if he longed to comfort her
by more words. He thought better of it, however, and silently left
the room.
For a long time Ellinor sat still; now and then taking up Miss
Monro's letter, and re-reading the few terrible details. Then she
bethought her that possibly the canon might have brought a copy of
the Times, containing the examination of Dixon before the
magistrates, and she opened the door and called to a passing servant
to make the inquiry. She was quite right in her conjecture; Dr.
Livingstone had had the paper in his pocket during his interview with
her; but he thought the evidence so conclusive, that the perusal of
it would only be adding to her extreme distress by accelerating the
conviction of Dixon's guilt, which he believed she must arrive at
sooner or later.
He had been reading the report over with Mrs. Forbes and her
daughters, after his return from Ellinor's room, and they were all
participating in his opinion upon it, when her request for the Times
was brought. They had reluctantly agreed, saying there did not
appear to be a shadow of doubt on the fact of Dixon's having killed
Mr. Dunster, only hoping there might prove to be some extenuating
circumstances, which Ellinor had probably recollected, and which she
was desirous of producing on the approaching trial.
CHAPTER XIII.

Ellinor, having read the report of Dixon's examination in the

newspaper, bathed her eyes and forehead in cold water, and tried to
still her poor heart's beating, that she might be clear and collected
enough to weigh the evidence.
Every line of it was condemnatory. One or two witnesses spoke of
Dixon's unconcealed dislike of Dunster, a dislike which Ellinor knew
had been entertained by the old servant out of a species of loyalty
to his master, as well as from personal distaste. The fleam was
proved beyond all doubt to be Dixon's; and a man, who had been
stable-boy in Mr. Wilkins's service, swore that on the day when Mr.
Dunster was missed, and when the whole town was wondering what had
become of him, a certain colt of Mr. Wilkins's had needed bleeding,
and that he had been sent by Dixon to the farrier's for a horse-
lancet, an errand which he had remarked upon at the time, as he knew
that Dixon had a fleam of his own.
Mr. Osbaldistone was examined. He kept interrupting himself
perpetually to express his surprise at the fact of so steady and
well-conducted a man as Dixon being guilty of so heinous a crime, and
was willing enough to testify to the excellent character which he had
borne during all the many years he had been in his (Mr.
Osbaldistone's) service; but he appeared to be quite convinced by the
evidence previously given of the prisoner's guilt in the matter, and
strengthened the case against him materially by stating the
circumstance of the old man's dogged unwillingness to have the
slightest interference by cultivation with that particular piece of
ground.
Here Ellinor shuddered. Before her, in that Roman bed-chamber, rose
the fatal oblong she knew by heart--a little green moss or lichen,
and thinly-growing blades of grass scarcely covering the caked and
undisturbed soil under the old tree. Oh, that she had been in
England when the surveyors of the railway between Ashcombe and Hamley
had altered their line; she would have entreated, implored, compelled
her trustees not to have sold that piece of ground for any sum of
money whatever. She would have bribed the surveyors, done she knew
not what--but now it was too late; she would not let her mind wander
off to what might have been; she would force herself again to attend
to the newspaper columns. There was little more: the prisoner had
been asked if he could say anything to clear himself, and properly
cautioned not to say anything to incriminate himself. The poor old
man's person was described, and his evident emotion. "The prisoner
was observed to clutch at the rail before him to steady himself, and
his colour changed so much at this part of the evidence that one of
the turnkeys offered him a glass of water, which he declined. He is
a man of a strongly-built frame, and with rather a morose and sullen
cast of countenance."
"My poor, poor Dixon!" said Ellinor, laying down the paper for an
instant, and she was near crying, only she had resolved to shed no
tears till she had finished all, and could judge of the chances.
There were but a few lines more: "At one time the prisoner seemed to
be desirous of alleging something in his defence, but he changed his
mind, if such had been the case, and in reply to Mr. Gordon (the
magistrate) he only said, 'You've made a pretty strong case out again
me, gentlemen, and it seems for to satisfy you; so I think I'll not
disturb your minds by saying anything more.' Accordingly, Dixon now
stands committed for trial for murder at the next Hellingford
Assizes, which commence on March the seventh, before Baron Rushton
and Mr. Justice Corbet."
"Mr. Justice Corbet!" The words ran through Ellinor as though she
had been stabbed with a knife, and by an irrepressible movement she
stood up rigid. The young man, her lover in her youth, the old
servant who in those days was perpetually about her--the two who had
so often met in familiar if not friendly relations, now to face each
other as judge and accused! She could not tell how much Mr. Corbet
had conjectured from the partial revelation she had made to him of
the impending shame that hung over her and hers. A day or two ago
she could have remembered the exact words she had used in that
memorable interview; but now, strive as she would, she could only
recall facts, not words. After all, the Mr. Justice Corbet might not
be Ralph. There was one chance in a hundred against the identity of
the two.
While she was weighing probabilities in her sick dizzy mind, she
heard soft steps outside her bolted door, and low voices whispering.
It was the bedtime of happy people with hearts at ease. Some of the
footsteps passed lightly on; but there was a gentle rap at Ellinor's
door. She pressed her two hot hands hard against her temples for an
instant before she went to open the door. There stood Mrs. Forbes in
her handsome evening dress, holding a lighted lamp in her hand.
"May I come in, my dear?" she asked. Ellinor's stiff dry lips
refused to utter the words of assent which indeed did not come
readily from her heart.
"I am so grieved at this sad news which the canon brings. I can well
understand what a shock it must be to you; we have just been saying
it must be as bad for you as it would be to us if our old Donald
should turn out to have been a hidden murderer all these years that
he has lived with us; I really could have as soon suspected Donald as
that white-haired respectable old man who used to come and see you at
East Chester."
Ellinor felt that she must say something. "It is a terrible shock--
poor old man! and no friend near him, even Mr. Osbaldistone giving
evidence again him. Oh, dear, dear! why did I ever come to Rome?"
"Now, my dear, you must not let yourself take an exaggerated view of
the case. Sad and shocking as it is to have been so deceived, it is
what happens to many of us, though not to so terrible a degree; and
as to your coming to Rome having anything to do with it--"
(Mrs. Forbes almost smiled at the idea, so anxious was she to banish
the idea of self-reproach from Ellinor's sensitive mind, but Ellinor
interrupted her abruptly:)
"Mrs. Forbes! did he--did Canon Livingstone tell you that I must
leave to-morrow? I must go to England as fast as possible to do what
I can for Dixon."
"Yes, he told us you were thinking of it, and it was partly that made
me force myself in upon you to-night. I think, my love, you are
mistaken in feeling as if you were called upon to do more than what
the canon tells me Miss Monro has already done in your name--engaged
the best legal advice, and spared no expense to give the suspected
man every chance. What could you do more even if you were on the
spot? And it is very possible that the trial may have come on before
you get home. Then what could you do? He would either have been
acquitted or condemned; if the former, he would find public sympathy
all in his favour; it always is for the unjustly accused. And if he
turns out to be guilty, my dear Ellinor, it will be far better for
you to have all the softening which distance can give to such a
dreadful termination to the life of a poor man whom you have
respected so long."
But Ellinor spoke again with a kind of irritated determination, very
foreign to her usual soft docility:
"Please just let me judge for myself this once. I am not ungrateful.
God knows I don't want to vex one who has been so kind to me as you
have been, dear Mrs. Forbes; but I must go--and every word you say to
dissuade me only makes me more convinced. I am going to Civita to-
morrow. I shall be that much on the way. I cannot rest here."
Mrs. Forbes looked at her in grave silence. Ellinor could not bear
the consciousness of that fixed gaze. Yet its fixity only arose from
Mrs. Forbes' perplexity as to how best to assist Ellinor, whether to
restrain her by further advice--of which the first dose had proved so
useless--or to speed her departure. Ellinor broke on her
meditations:
"You have always been so kind and good to me,--go on being so--
please, do! Leave me alone now, dear Mrs. Forbes, for I cannot bear
talking about it, and help me to go to-morrow, and you do not know
how I will pray to God to bless you!"
Such an appeal was irresistible. Mrs. Forbes kissed her very
tenderly, and went to rejoin her daughters, who were clustered
together in their mother's bedroom awaiting her coming.
"Well, mamma, how is she? What does she say?"
"She is in a very excited state, poor thing! and has got so strong an
impression that it is her duty to go back to England and do all she
can for this wretched old man, that I am afraid we must not oppose
her. I am afraid that she really must go on Thursday."
Although Mrs. Forbes secured the services of a travelling-maid, Dr.
Livingstone insisted on accompanying Ellinor to England, and it would
have required more energy than she possessed at this time to combat a
resolution which both words and manner expressed as determined. She
would much rather have travelled alone with her maid; she did not
feel the need of the services he offered; but she was utterly
listless and broken down; all her interest was centred in the thought
of Dixon and his approaching trial, and perplexity as to the mode in
which she must do her duty.
They embarked late that evening in the tardy Santa Lucia, and Ellinor
immediately went to her berth. She was not sea-sick; that might
possibly have lessened her mental sufferings, which all night long
tormented her. High-perched in an upper berth, she did not like
disturbing the other occupants of the cabin till daylight appeared.
Then she descended and dressed, and went on deck; the vessel was just
passing the rocky coast of Elba, and the sky was flushed with rosy
light, that made the shadows on the island of the most exquisite
purple. The sea still heaved with yesterday's storm, but the motion
only added to the beauty of the sparkles and white foam that dimpled
and curled on the blue waters. The air was delicious, after the
closeness of the cabin, and Ellinor only wondered that more people
were not on deck to enjoy it. One or two stragglers came up, time
after time, and began pacing the deck. Dr. Livingstone came up
before very long; but he seemed to have made a rule of not obtruding
himself on Ellinor, excepting when he could be of some use. After a
few words of common-place morning greeting, he, too, began to walk
backwards and forwards, while Ellinor sat quietly watching the lovely
island receding fast from her view--a beautiful vision never to be
seen again by her mortal eyes.
Suddenly there was a shock and stound all over the vessel, her
progress was stopped, and a rocking vibration was felt everywhere.
The quarter-deck was filled with blasts of steam, which obscured
everything. Sick people came rushing up out of their berths in
strange undress; the steerage passengers--a motley and picturesque
set of people, in many varieties of gay costume--took refuge on the
quarter-deck, speaking loudly in all varieties of French and Italian
patois. Ellinor stood up in silent, wondering dismay. Was the Santa
Lucia going down on the great deep, and Dixon unaided in his peril?
Dr. Livingstone was by her side in a moment. She could scarcely see
him for the vapour, nor hear him for the roar of the escaping steam.
"Do not be unnecessarily frightened," he repeated, a little louder.
"Some accident has occurred to the engines. I will go and make
instant inquiry, and come back to you as soon as I can. Trust to
me."
He came back to where she sat trembling.
"A part of the engine is broken, through the carelessness of these
Neapolitan engineers; they say we must make for the nearest port--
return to Civita, in fact."
"But Elba is not many miles away," said Ellinor. "If this steam were
but away, you could see it still."
"And if we were landed there we might stay on the island for many
days; no steamer touches there; but if we return to Civita, we shall
be in time for the Sunday boat."
"Oh, dear, dear!" said Ellinor. "To-day is the second--Sunday will
be the fourth--the assizes begin on the seventh; how miserably
unfortunate!"
"Yes!" he said, "it is. And these things always appear so doubly
unfortunate when they hinder our serving others! But it does not
follow that because the assizes begin at Hellingford on the seventh,
Dixon's trial will come on so soon. We may still get to Marseilles
on Monday evening; on by diligence to Lyons; it will--it must, I
fear, be Thursday, at the earliest, before we reach Paris--Thursday,
the eighth--and I suppose you know of some exculpatory evidence that
has to be hunted up?"
He added this unwillingly; for he saw that Ellinor was jealous of the
secresy she had hitherto maintained as to her reasons for believing
Dixon innocent; but he could not help thinking that she, a gentle,
timid woman, unaccustomed to action or business, would require some
of the assistance which he would have been so thankful to give her;
especially as this untoward accident would increase the press of time
in which what was to be done would have to be done.
But no. Ellinor scarcely replied to his half-inquiry as to her
reasons for hastening to England. She yielded to all his directions,
agreed to his plans, but gave him none of her confidence, and he had
to submit to this exclusion from sympathy in the exact causes of her
anxiety.
Once more in the dreary sala, with the gaudy painted ceiling, the
bare dirty floor, the innumerable rattling doors and windows!
Ellinor was submissive and patient in demeanour, because so sick and
despairing at heart. Her maid was ten times as demonstrative of
annoyance and disgust; she who had no particular reason for wanting
to reach England, but who thought it became her dignity to make it
seem as though she had.
At length the weary time was over; and again they sailed past Elba,
and arrived at Marseilles. Now Ellinor began to feel how much
assistance it was to her to have Dr. Livingstone for a "courier," as
he had several times called himself.

CHAPTER XIV.

"Where now?" said the canon, as they approached the London Bridge
station.
"To the Great Western," said she; "Hellingford is on that line, I
see. But, please, now we must part."
"Then I may not go with you to Hellingford? At any rate, you will
allow me to go with you to the railway station, and do my last office
as courier in getting you your ticket and placing you in the
carriage."
So they went together to the station, and learnt that no train was
leaving for Hellingford for two hours. There was nothing for it but
to go to the hotel close by, and pass away the time as best they
could.
Ellinor called for her maid's accounts, and dismissed her. Some
refreshment that the canon had ordered was eaten, and the table
cleared. He began walking up and down the room, his arms folded, his
eyes cast down. Every now and then he looked at the clock on the
mantelpiece. When that showed that it only wanted a quarter of an
hour to the time appointed for the train to start, he came up to
Ellinor, who sat leaning her head upon her hand, her hand resting on
the table.
"Miss Wilkins," he began--and there was something peculiar in his
tone which startled Ellinor--"I am sure you will not scruple to apply
to me if in any possible way I can help you in this sad trouble of
yours?"
"No indeed I won't!" said Ellinor, gratefully, and putting out her
hand as a token. He took it, and held it; she went on, a little more
hastily than before: "You know you were so good as to say you would
go at once and see Miss Monro, and tell her all you know, and that I
will write to her as soon as I can."
"May I not ask for one line?" he continued, still holding her hand.
"Certainly: so kind a friend as you shall hear all I can tell; that
is, all I am at liberty to tell."
"A friend! Yes, I am a friend; and I will not urge any other claim
just now. Perhaps--"
Ellinor could not affect to misunderstand him. His manner implied
even more than his words.
"No!" she said, eagerly. "We are friends. That is it. I think we
shall always be friends, though I will tell you now--something--this
much--it is a sad secret. God help me! I am as guilty as poor
Dixon, if, indeed, he is guilty--but he is innocent--indeed he is!"
"If he is no more guilty than you, I am sure he is! Let me be more
than your friend, Ellinor--let me know all, and help you all that I
can, with the right of an affianced husband."
"No, no!" said she, frightened both at what she had revealed, and his
eager, warm, imploring manner. "That can never be. You do not know
the disgrace that may be hanging over me."
"If that is all," said he, "I take my risk--if that is all--if you
only fear that I may shrink from sharing any peril you may be exposed
to."
"It is not peril--it is shame and obloquy--" she murmured.
"Well! shame and obloquy. Perhaps, if I knew all I could shield you
from it."
"Don't, pray, speak any more about it now; if you do, I must say
'No.'"
She did not perceive the implied encouragement in these words; but he
did, and they sufficed to make him patient.
The time was up, and he could only render her his last services as
"courier," and none other but the necessary words at starting passed
between them.
But he went away from the station with a cheerful heart; while she,
sitting alone and quiet, and at last approaching near to the place
where so much was to be decided, felt sadder and sadder, heavier and
heavier.
All the intelligence she had gained since she had seen the Galignani
in Paris, had been from the waiter at the Great Western Hotel, who,
after returning from a vain search for an unoccupied Times, had
volunteered the information that there was an unusual demand for the
paper because of Hellingford Assizes, and the trial there for murder
that was going on.
There was no electric telegraph in those days; at every station
Ellinor put her head out, and enquired if the murder trial at
Hellingford was ended. Some porters told her one thing, some
another, in their hurry; she felt that she could not rely on them.
"Drive to Mr. Johnson's in the High street--quick, quick. I will
give you half-a-crown if you will go quick."
For, indeed, her endurance, her patience, was strained almost to
snapping; yet at Hellingford station, where doubtless they could have
told her the truth, she dared not ask the question. It was past
eight o'clock at night. In many houses in the little country town
there were unusual lights and sounds. The inhabitants were showing
their hospitality to such of the strangers brought by the assizes, as
were lingering there now that the business which had drawn them was
over. The Judges had left the town that afternoon, to wind up the
circuit by the short list of a neighbouring county town.
Mr. Johnson was entertaining a dinner-party of attorneys when he was
summoned from dessert by the announcement of a "lady who wanted to
speak to him immediate and particular."
He went into his study in not the best of tempers. There he found
his client, Miss Wilkins, white and ghastly, standing by the
fireplace, with her eyes fixed on the door.
"It is you, Miss Wilkins! I am very glad--"
"Dixon!" said she. It was all she could utter.
Mr. Johnson shook his head.
"Ah; that's a sad piece of business, and I'm afraid it has shortened
your visit at Rome."
"Is he--?"
"Ay, I'm afraid there's no doubt of his guilt. At any rate, the jury
found him guilty, and--"
"And!" she repeated, quickly, sitting down, the better to hear the
words that she knew were coming -
"He is condemned to death."
"When?"
"The Saturday but one after the Judges left the town, I suppose--it's
the usual time."
"Who tried him?"
"Judge Corbet; and, for a new judge, I must say I never knew one who
got through his business so well. It was really as much as I could
stand to hear him condemning the prisoner to death. Dixon was
undoubtedly guilty, and he was as stubborn as could be--a sullen old
fellow who would let no one help him through. I'm sure I did my best
for him at Miss Monro's desire and for your sake. But he would
furnish me with no particulars, help us to no evidence. I had the
hardest work to keep him from confessing all before witnesses, who
would have been bound to repeat it as evidence against him. Indeed,
I never thought he would have pleaded 'Not Guilty.' I think it was
only with a desire to justify himself in the eyes of some old Hamley
acquaintances. Good God, Miss Wilkins! What's the matter? You're
not fainting!" He rang the bell till the rope remained in his hands.
"Here, Esther! Jerry! Whoever you are, come quick! Miss Wilkins
has fainted! Water! Wine! Tell Mrs. Johnson to come here
directly!"
Mrs. Johnson, a kind, motherly woman, who had been excluded from the
"gentleman's dinner party," and had devoted her time to
superintending the dinner her husband had ordered, came in answer to
his call for assistance, and found Ellinor lying back in her chair
white and senseless.
"Bessy, Miss Wilkins has fainted; she has had a long journey, and is
in a fidget about Dixon, the old fellow who was sentenced to be hung
for that murder, you know. I can't stop here, I must go back to
those men. You bring her round, and see her to bed. The blue room
is empty since Horner left. She must stop here, and I'll see her in
the morning. Take care of her, and keep her mind as easy as you can,
will you, for she can do no good by fidgeting."
And, knowing that he left Ellinor in good hands, and with plenty of
assistance about her, he returned to his friends.
Ellinor came to herself before long.
"It was very foolish of me, but I could not help it," said she,
apologetically.
"No; to be sure not, dear. Here, drink this; it is some of Mr.
Johnson's best port wine that he has sent out on purpose for you. Or
would you rather have some white soup--or what? We've had everything
you could think of for dinner, and you've only to ask and have. And
then you must go to bed, my dear--Mr. Johnson says you must; and
there's a well-aired room, for Mr. Horner only left us this morning."
"I must see Mr. Johnson again, please."
"But indeed you must not. You must not worry your poor head with
business now; and Johnson would only talk to you on business. No; go
to bed, and sleep soundly, and then you'll get up quite bright and
strong, and fit to talk about business."
"I cannot sleep--I cannot rest till I have asked Mr. Johnson one or
two more questions; indeed I cannot," pleaded Ellinor.
Mrs. Johnson knew that her husband's orders on such occasions were
peremptory, and that she should come in for a good conjugal scolding
if, after what he had said, she ventured to send for him again. Yet
Ellinor looked so entreating and wistful that she could hardly find
in her heart to refuse her. A bright thought struck her.
"Here is pen and paper, my dear. Could you not write the questions
you wanted to ask? and he'll just jot down the answers upon the same
piece of paper. I'll send it in by Jerry. He has got friends to
dinner with him, you see."
Ellinor yielded. She sat, resting her weary head on her hand, and
wondering what were the questions which would have come so readily to
her tongue could she have been face to face with him. As it was, she
only wrote this:
"How early can I see you to-morrow morning? Will you take all the
necessary steps for my going to Dixon as soon as possible? Could I
be admitted to him to-night?"
The pencilled answers were:
"Eight o'clock. Yes. No."
"I suppose he knows best," said Ellinor, sighing, as she read the
last word. "But it seems wicked in me to be going to bed--and he so
near, in prison."
When she rose up and stood, she felt the former dizziness return, and
that reconciled her to seeking rest before she entered upon the
duties which were becoming clearer before her, now that she knew all
and was on the scene of action. Mrs. Johnson brought her white-wine
whey instead of the tea she had asked for; and perhaps it was owing
to this that she slept so soundly.

CHAPTER XV.

When Ellinor awoke the clear light of dawn was fully in the room.
She could not remember where she was; for so many mornings she had
wakened up in strange places that it took her several minutes before
she could make out the geographical whereabouts of the heavy blue
moreen curtains, the print of the lord-lieutenant of the county on
the wall, and all the handsome ponderous mahogany furniture that
stuffed up the room. As soon as full memory came into her mind, she
started up; nor did she go to bed again, although she saw by her
watch on the dressing-table that it was not yet six o'clock. She
dressed herself with the dainty completeness so habitual to her that
it had become an unconscious habit, and then--the instinct was
irrepressible--she put on her bonnet and shawl, and went down, past
the servant on her knees cleaning the doorstep, out into the fresh
open air; and so she found her way down the High Street to
Hellingford Castle, the building in which the courts of assize were
held--the prison in which Dixon lay condemned to die. She almost
knew she could not see him; yet it seemed like some amends to her
conscience for having slept through so many hours of the night if she
made the attempt. She went up to the porter's lodge, and asked the
little girl sweeping out the place if she might see Abraham Dixon.
The child stared at her, and ran into the house, bringing out her
father, a great burly man, who had not yet donned either coat or
waistcoat, and who, consequently, felt the morning air as rather
nipping. To him Ellinor repeated her question.
"Him as is to be hung come Saturday se'nnight? Why, ma'am, I've
nought to do with it. You may go to the governor's house and try;
but, if you'll excuse me, you'll have your walk for your pains. Them
in the condemned cells is never seen by nobody without the sheriff's
order. You may go up to the governor's house and welcome; but
they'll only tell you the same. Yon's the governor's house."
Ellinor fully believed the man, and yet she went on to the house
indicated, as if she still hoped that in her case there might be some
exception to the rule, which she now remembered to have heard of
before, in days when such a possible desire as to see a condemned
prisoner was treated by her as a wish that some people might have,
did have--people as far removed from her circle of circumstances as
the inhabitants of the moon. Of course she met with the same reply,
a little more abruptly given, as if every man was from his birth
bound to know such an obvious regulation.
She went out past the porter, now fully clothed. He was sorry for
her disappointment, but could not help saying, with a slight tone of
exultation: "Well, you see I was right, ma'am!"
She walked as nearly round the castle as ever she could, looking up
at the few high-barred windows she could see, and wondering in what
part of the building Dixon was confined. Then she went into the
adjoining churchyard, and sitting down upon a tombstone, she gazed
idly at the view spread below her--a view which was considered as the
lion of the place, to be shown to all strangers by the inhabitants of
Hellingford. Ellinor did not see it, however; she only saw the
blackness of that fatal night, the hurried work--the lanterns
glancing to and fro. She only heard the hard breathing of those who
are engaged upon unwonted labour; the few hoarse muttered words; the
swaying of the branches to and fro. All at once the church clock
above her struck eight, and then pealed out for distant labourers to
cease their work for a time. Such was the old custom of the place.
Ellinor rose up, and made her way back to Mr. Johnson's house in High
Street. The room felt close and confined in which she awaited her
interview with Mr. Johnson, who had sent down an apology for having
overslept himself, and at last made his appearance in a hurried half-
awakened state, in consequence of his late hospitality of the night
before.
"I am so sorry I gave you all so much trouble last night," said
Ellinor, apologetically. "I was overtired, and much shocked by the
news I heard."
"No trouble, no trouble, I am sure. Neither Mrs. Johnson nor I felt
it in the least a trouble. Many ladies I know feel such things very
trying, though there are others that can stand a judge's putting on
the black cap better than most men. I'm sure I saw some as composed
as could be under Judge Corbet's speech."
"But about Dixon? He must not die, Mr. Johnson."
"Well, I don't know that he will," said Mr. Johnson, in something of
the tone of voice he would have used in soothing a child. "Judge
Corbet said something about the possibility of a pardon. The jury
did not recommend him to mercy: you see, his looks went so much
against him, and all the evidence was so strong, and no defence, so
to speak, for he would not furnish any information on which we could
base defence. But the judge did give some hope, to my mind, though
there are others that think differently."
"I tell you, Mr. Johnson, he must not die, and he shall not. To whom
must I go?"
"Whew! Have you got additional evidence?" with a sudden sharp glance
of professional inquiry.
"Never mind," Ellinor answered. "I beg your pardon . . . only tell
me into whose hands the power of life and death has passed."
"Into the Home Secretary's--Sir Phillip Homes; but you cannot get
access to him on such an errand. It is the judge who tried the case
that must urge a reprieve--Judge Corbet."
"Judge Corbet?"
"Yes; and he was rather inclined to take a merciful view of the whole
case. I saw it in his charge. He'll be the person for you to see.
I suppose you don't like to give me your confidence, or else I could
arrange and draw up what will have to be said?"
"No. What I have to say must be spoken to the arbiter--to no one
else. I am afraid I answered you impatiently just now. You must
forgive me; if you knew all, I am sure you would."
"Say no more, my dear lady. We will suppose you have some evidence
not adduced at the trial. Well; you must go up and see the judge,
since you don't choose to impart it to any one, and lay it before
him. He will doubtless compare it with his notes of the trial, and
see how far it agrees with them. Of course you must be prepared with
some kind of proof; for Judge Corbet will have to test your
evidence."
"It seems strange to think of him as the judge," said Ellinor, almost
to herself.
"Why, yes. He's but a young judge. You knew him at Hamley, I
suppose? I remember his reading there with Mr. Ness."
"Yes, but do not let us talk more about that time. Tell me when can
I see Dixon? I have been to the castle already, but they said I must
have a sheriff's order."
"To be sure. I desired Mrs. Johnson to tell you so last night. Old
Ormerod was dining here; he is clerk to the magistrates, and I told
him of your wish. He said he would see Sir Henry Croper, and have
the order here before ten. But all this time Mrs. Johnson is waiting
breakfast for us. Let me take you into the dining-room."
It was very hard work for Ellinor to do her duty as a guest, and to
allow herself to be interested and talked to on local affairs by her
host and hostess. But she felt as if she had spoken shortly and
abruptly to Mr. Johnson in their previous conversation, and that she
must try and make amends for it; so she attended to all the details
about the restoration of the church, and the difficulty of getting a
good music-master for the three little Miss Johnsons, with all her
usual gentle good breeding and patience, though no one can tell how
her heart and imagination were full of the coming interview with poor
old Dixon.
By-and-by Mr. Johnson was called out of the room to see Mr. Ormerod,
and receive the order of admission from him. Ellinor clasped her
hands tight together as she listened with apparent composure to Mrs
Johnson's never-ending praise of the Hullah system. But when Mr.
Johnson returned, she could not help interrupting her eulogy, and
saying -
"Then I may go now?"
Yes, the order was there--she might go, and Mr. Johnson would
accompany her, to see that she met with no difficulty or obstacle.
As they walked thither, he told her that some one--a turnkey, or some
one--would have to be present at the interview; that such was always
the rule in the case of condemned prisoners; but that if this third
person was "obliging," he would keep out of earshot. Mr. Johnson
quietly took care to see that the turnkey who accompanied Ellinor was
"obliging."
The man took her across high-walled courts, along stone corridors,
and through many locked doors, before they came to the condemned
cells.
"I've had three at a time in here," said he, unlocking the final
door, "after Judge Morton had been here. We always called him the
'Hanging Judge.' But its five years since he died, and now there's
never more than one in at a time; though once it was a woman for
poisoning her husband. Mary Jones was her name."
The stone passage out of which the cells opened was light, and bare,
and scrupulously clean. Over each door was a small barred window,
and an outer window of the same description was placed high up in the
cell, which the turnkey now opened.
Old Abraham Dixon was sitting on the side of his bed, doing nothing.
His head was bent, his frame sunk, and he did not seem to care to
turn round and see who it was that entered.
Ellinor tried to keep down her sobs while the man went up to him, and
laying his hand on his shoulder, and lightly shaking him, he said:
"Here's a friend come to see you, Dixon." Then, turning to Ellinor,
he added, "There's some as takes it in this kind o' stunned way,
while others are as restless as a wild beast in a cage, after they're
sentenced." And then he withdrew into the passage, leaving the door
open, so that he could see all that passed if he chose to look, but
ostentatiously keeping his eyes averted, and whistling to himself, so
that he could not hear what they said to each other.
Dixon looked up at Ellinor, but then let his eyes fall on the ground
again; the increasing trembling of his shrunken frame was the only
sign he gave that he had recognised her.
She sat down by him, and took his large horny hand in hers. She
wanted to overcome her inclination to sob hysterically before she
spoke. She stroked the bony shrivelled fingers, on which her hot
scalding tears kept dropping.
"Dunnot do that," said he, at length, in a hollow voice. "Dunnot
take on about it; it's best as it is, missy."
"No, Dixon, it's not best. It shall not be. You know it shall not--
cannot be."
"I'm rather tired of living. It's been a great strain and labour for
me. I think I'd as lief be with God as with men. And you see, I
were fond on him ever sin' he were a little lad, and told me what
hard times he had at school, he did, just as if I were his brother!
I loved him next to Molly Greaves. Dear! and I shall see her again,
I reckon, come next Saturday week! They'll think well on me, up
there, I'll be bound; though I cannot say as I've done all as I
should do here below."
"But, Dixon," said Ellinor, "you know who did this--this--"
"Guilty o' murder," said he. "That's what they called it. Murder!
And that it never were, choose who did it."
"My poor, poor father did it. I am going up to London this
afternoon; I am going to see the judge, and tell him all."
"Don't you demean yourself to that fellow, missy. It's him as left
you in the lurch as soon as sorrow and shame came nigh you."
He looked up at her now, for the first time; but she went on as if
she had not noticed those wistful, weary eyes.
"Yes! I shall go to him. I know who it is; and I am resolved.
After all, he may be better than a stranger, for real help; and I
shall never remember any--anything else, when I think of you, good
faithful friend."
"He looks but a wizened old fellow in his grey wig. I should hardly
ha' known him. I gave him a look, as much as to say, 'I could tell
tales o' you, my lord judge, if I chose.' I don't know if he heeded
me, though. I suppose it were for a sign of old acquaintance that he
said he'd recommend me to mercy. But I'd sooner have death nor
mercy, by long odds. Yon man out there says mercy means Botany Bay.
It 'ud be like killing me by inches, that would. It would. I'd
liefer go straight to Heaven, than live on among the black folk."
He began to shake again: this idea of transportation, from its very
mysteriousness, was more terrifying to him than death. He kept on
saying plaintively, "Missy, you'll never let 'em send me to Botany
Bay; I couldn't stand that."
"No, no!" said she. "You shall come out of this prison, and go home
with me to East Chester; I promise you you shall. I promise you. I
don't yet quite know how, but trust in my promise. Don't fret about
Botany Bay. If you go there, I go too. I am so sure you will not
go. And you know if you have done anything against the law in
concealing that fatal night's work, I did too, and if you are to be
punished, I will be punished too. But I feel sure it will be right;
I mean, as right as anything can be, with the recollection of that
time present to us, as it must always be." She almost spoke these
last words to herself. They sat on, hand in hand for a few minutes
more in silence.
"I thought you'd come to me. I knowed you were far away in foreign
parts. But I used to pray to God. 'Dear Lord God!' I used to say,
'let me see her again.' I told the chaplain as I'd begin to pray for
repentance, at after I'd done praying that I might see you once
again: for it just seemed to take all my strength to say those words
as I've named. And I thought as how God knew what was in my heart
better than I could tell Him: how I was main and sorry for all as
I'd ever done wrong; I allays were, at after it was done; but I
thought as no one could know how bitter-keen I wanted to see you."
Again they sank into silence. Ellinor felt as if she would fain be
away and active in procuring his release; but she also perceived how
precious her presence was to him; and she did not like to leave him a
moment before the time allowed her. His voice had changed to a weak,
piping old man's quaver, and between the times of his talking he
seemed to relapse into a dreamy state; but through it all he held her
hand tight, as though afraid that she would leave him.
So the hour elapsed, with no more spoken words than those above.
From time to time Ellinor's tears dropped down upon her lap; she
could not restrain them, though she scarce knew why she cried just
then.
At length the turnkey said that the time allowed for the interview
was ended. Ellinor spoke no word; but rose, and bent down and kissed
the old man's forehead, saying -
"I shall come back to-morrow. God keep and comfort you!"
So almost without an articulate word from him in reply (he rose up,
and stood on his shaking legs, as she bade him farewell, putting his
hand to his head with the old habitual mark of respect), she went her
way, swiftly out of the prison, swiftly back with Mr. Johnson to his
house, scarcely patient or strong enough in her hurry to explain to
him fully all that she meant to do. She only asked him a few
absolutely requisite questions; and informed him of her intention to
go straight to London to see Judge Corbet.
Just before the railway carriage in which she was seated started on
the journey, she bent forward, and put out her hand once more to Mr.
Johnson. "To-morrow I will thank you for all," she said. "I cannot
now.
It was about the same time that she had reached Hellingford on the
previous night, that she arrived at the Great Western station on this
evening--past eight o'clock. On the way she had remembered and
arranged many things: one important question she had omitted to ask
Mr. Johnson; but that was easily remedied. She had not enquired
where she could find Judge Corbet; if she had, Mr. Johnson could
probably have given her his professional address. As it was, she
asked for a Post-Office Directory at the hotel, and looked out for
his private dwelling--128 Hyde Park Gardens.
She rang for a waiter.
"Can I send a messenger to Hyde Park Gardens?" she said, hurrying on
to her business, tired and worn out as she was. "It is only to ask
if Judge Corbet is at home this evening. If he is, I must go and see
him."
The waiter was a little surprised, and would gladly have had her name
to authorise the enquiry but she could not bear to send it: it would
be bad enough that first meeting, without the feeling that he, too,
had had time to recall all the past days. Better to go in upon him
unprepared, and plunge into the subject.
The waiter returned with the answer while she yet was pacing up and
down the room restlessly, nerving herself for the interview.
"The messenger has been to Hyde Park Gardens, ma'am. The Judge and
Lady Corbet are gone out to dinner."
Lady Corbet! Of course Ellinor knew that he was married. Had she
not been present at the wedding in East Chester Cathedral? But,
somehow, these recent events had so carried her back to old times,
that the intimate association of the names, "the Judge and Lady
Corbet," seemed to awaken her out of some dream.
"Oh, very well," she said, just as if these thoughts were not passing
rapidly through her mind. "Let me be called at seven to-morrow
morning, and let me have a cab at the door to Hyde Park Gardens at
eight."
And so she went to bed; but scarcely to sleep. All night long she
had the scenes of those old times, the happy, happy days of her
youth, the one terrible night that cut all happiness short, present
before her. She could almost have fancied that she heard the long-
silent sounds of her father's step, her father's way of breathing,
the rustle of his newspaper as he hastily turned it over, coming
through the lapse of years; the silence of the night. She knew that
she had the little writing-case of her girlhood with her, in her box.
The treasures of the dead that it contained, the morsel of dainty
sewing, the little sister's golden curl, the half-finished letter to
Mr. Corbet, were all there. She took them out, and looked at each
separately; looked at them long--long and wistfully. "Will it be of
any use to me?" she questioned of herself, as she was about to put
her father's letter back into its receptacle. She read the last
words over again, once more:
"From my death-bed I adjure you to stand her friend; I will beg
pardon on my knees for anything."
"I will take it," thought she. "I need not bring it out; most likely
there will be no need for it, after what I shall have to say. All is
so altered, so changed between us, as utterly as if it never had
been, that I think I shall have no shame in showing it him, for my
own part of it. While, if he sees poor papa's, dear, dear papa's
suffering humility, it may make him think more gently of one who
loved him once though they parted in wrath with each other, I'm
afraid."
So she took the letter with her when she drove to Hyde Park Gardens.
Every nerve in her body was in such a high state of tension that she
could have screamed out at the cabman's boisterous knock at the door.
She got out hastily, before any one was ready or willing to answer
such an untimely summons; paid the man double what he ought to have
had; and stood there, sick, trembling, and humble.

CHAPTER XVI AND LAST.

"Is Judge Corbet at home? Can I see him?" she asked of the footman,
who at length answered the door.
He looked at her curiously, and a little familiarly, before he
replied,
"Why, yes! He's pretty sure to be at home at this time of day; but
whether he'll see you is quite another thing."
"Would you be so good as to ask him? It is on very particular
business."
"Can you give me a card? your name, perhaps, will do, if you have not
a card. I say, Simmons" (to a lady's-maid crossing the hall), "is
the judge up yet?"
"Oh, yes! he's in his dressing-room this half-hour. My lady is
coming down directly. It is just breakfast-time."
"Can't you put it off and come again, a little later?" said he,
turning once more to Ellinor--white Ellinor! trembling Ellinor!
"No! please let me come in. I will wait. I am sure Judge Corbet
will see me, if you will tell him I am here. Miss Wilkins. He will
know the name."
"Well, then; will you wait here till I have got breakfast in?" said
the man, letting her into the hall, and pointing to the bench there,
he took her, from her dress, to be a lady's-maid or governess, or at
most a tradesman's daughter; and, besides, he was behindhand with all
his preparations. She came in and sat down.
"You will tell him I am here," she said faintly.
"Oh, yes, never fear: I'll send up word, though I don't believe
he'll come to you before breakfast."
He told a page, who ran upstairs, and, knocking at the judge's door,
said that a Miss Jenkins wanted to speak to him.
"Who?" asked the judge from the inside.
"Miss Jenkins. She said you would know the name, sir."
"Not I. Tell her to wait."
So Ellinor waited. Presently down the stairs, with slow deliberate
dignity, came the handsome Lady Corbet, in her rustling silks and
ample petticoats, carrying her fine boy, and followed by her majestic
nurse. She was ill-pleased that any one should come and take up her
husband's time when he was at home, and supposed to be enjoying
domestic leisure; and her imperious, inconsiderate nature did not
prompt her to any civility towards the gentle creature sitting down,
weary and heart-sick, in her house. On the contrary, she looked her
over as she slowly descended, till Ellinor shrank abashed from the
steady gaze of the large black eyes. Then she, her baby and nurse,
disappeared into the large dining-room, into which all the
preparations for breakfast had been carried.
The next person to come down would be the judge. Ellinor
instinctively put down her veil. She heard his quick decided step;
she had known it well of old.
He gave one of his sharp, shrewd glances at the person sitting in the
hall and waiting to speak to him, and his practised eye recognised
the lady at once, in spite of her travel-worn dress.
"Will you just come into this room?" said he, opening the door of his
study, to the front of the house: the dining-room was to the back;
they communicated by folding-doors.
The astute lawyer placed himself with his back to the window; it was
the natural position of the master of the apartment; but it also gave
him the advantage of seeing his companion's face in full light.
Ellinor lifted her veil; it had only been a dislike to a recognition
in the hall which had made her put it down.
Judge Corbet's countenance changed more than hers; she had been
prepared for the interview; he was not. But he usually had the full
command of the expression on his face.
"Ellinor! Miss Wilkins! is it you?" And he went forwards, holding
out his hand with cordial greeting, under which the embarrassment, if
he felt any, was carefully concealed. She could not speak all at
once in the way she wished.
"That stupid Henry told me 'Jenkins!' I beg your pardon. How could
they put you down to sit in the hall? You must come in and have some
breakfast with us; Lady Corbet will be delighted, I'm sure." His
sense of the awkwardness of the meeting with the woman who was once
to have been his wife, and of the probable introduction which was to
follow to the woman who was his actual wife grew upon him, and made
him speak a little hurriedly. Ellinor's next words were a wonderful
relief; and her soft gentle way of speaking was like the touch of a
cooling balsam.
"Thank you, you must excuse me. I am come strictly on business,
otherwise I should never have thought of calling on you at such an
hour. It is about poor Dixon."
"Ah! I thought as much!" said the judge, handing her a chair, and
sitting down himself. He tried to compose his mind to business, but
in spite of his strength of character, and his present efforts, the
remembrance of old times would come back at the sound of her voice.
He wondered if he was as much changed in appearance as she struck him
as being in that first look of recognition; after that first glance
he rather avoided meeting her eyes.
"I knew how much you would feel it. Some one at Hellingford told me
you were abroad, in Rome, I think. But you must not distress
yourself unnecessarily; the sentence is sure to be commuted to
transportation, or something equivalent. I was talking to the Home
Secretary about it only last night. Lapse of time and subsequent
good character quite preclude any idea of capital punishment." All
the time that he said this he had other thoughts at the back of his
mind--some curiosity, a little regret, a touch of remorse, a wonder
how the meeting (which, of course, would have to be some time)
between Lady Corbet and Ellinor would go off; but he spoke clearly
enough on the subject in hand, and no outward mark of distraction
from it appeared.
Elmer answered:
"I came to tell you, what I suppose may be told to any judge, in
confidence and full reliance on his secrecy, that Abraham Dixon was
not the murderer." She stopped short, and choked a little.
The judge looked sharply at her.
"Then you know who was?" said he.
"Yes," she replied, with a low, steady voice, looking him full in the
face, with sad, solemn eyes.
The truth flashed into his mind. He shaded his face, and did not
speak for a minute or two. Then he said, not looking up, a little
hoarsely, "This, then, was the shame you told me of long ago?"
"Yes," said she.
Both sat quite still; quite silent for some time. Through the
silence a sharp, clear voice was heard speaking through the folding-
doors.
"Take the kedgeree down, and tell the cook to keep it hot for the
judge. It is so tiresome people coming on business here, as if the
judge had not his proper hours for being at chambers."
He got up hastily, and went into the dining-room; but he had audibly
some difficulty in curbing his wife's irritation.
When he came back, Ellinor said:
"I am afraid I ought not to have come here now."
"Oh! it's all nonsense!" said he, in a tone of annoyance. "You've
done quite right." He seated himself where he had been before; and
again half covered his face with his hand.
"And Dixon knew of this. I believe I must put the fact plainly--to
you--your father was the guilty person? he murdered Dunster?"
"Yes. If you call it murder. It was done by a blow, in the heat of
passion. No one can ever tell how Dunster always irritated papa,"
said Ellinor, in a stupid, heavy way; and then she sighed.
"How do you know this?" There was a kind of tender reluctance in the
judge's voice, as he put all these questions. Ellinor had made up
her mind beforehand that something like them must be asked, and must
also be answered; but she spoke like a sleep-walker.
"I came into papa's room just after he had struck Mr. Dunster the
blow. He was lying insensible, as we thought--dead, as he really
was."
"What was Dixon's part in it? He must have known a good deal about
it. And the horse-lancet that was found with his name upon it?"
"Papa went to wake Dixon, and he brought his fleam--I suppose to try
and bleed him. I have said enough, have I not? I seem so confused.
But I will answer any question to make it appear that Dixon is
innocent."
The judge had been noting all down. He sat still now without
replying to her. Then he wrote rapidly, referring to his previous
paper, from time to time. In five minutes or so he read the facts
which Ellinor had stated, as he now arranged them, in a legal and
connected form. He just asked her one or two trivial questions as he
did so. Then he read it over to her, and asked her to sign it. She
took up the pen, and held it, hesitating.
"This will never be made public?" said she.
"No; I shall take care that no one but the Home Secretary sees it."
"Thank you. I could not help it, now it has come to this."
"There are not many men like Dixon," said the judge, almost to
himself, as he sealed the paper in an envelope.
"No," said Ellinor; "I never knew any one so faithful."
And just at the same moment the reflection on a less faithful person
that these words might seem to imply struck both of them, and each
instinctively glanced at the other.
"Ellinor!" said the judge, after a moment's pause, "we are friends, I
hope?"
"Yes; friends," said she, quietly and sadly.
He felt a little chagrined at her answer. Why, he could hardly tell.
To cover any sign of his feeling he went on talking.
"Where are you living now?"
"At East Chester."
"But you come sometimes to town, don't you? Let us know always--
whenever you come; and Lady Corbet shall call on you. Indeed, I wish
you'd let me bring her to see you to-day."
"Thank you. I am going straight back to Hellingford; at least, as
soon as you can get me the pardon for Dixon."
He half smiled at her ignorance.
"The pardon must be sent to the sheriff, who holds the warrant for
his execution. But, of course, you may have every assurance that it
shall be sent as soon as possible. It is just the same as if he had
it now."
"Thank you very much," said Ellinor rising.
"Pray don't go without breakfast. If you would rather not see Lady
Corbet just now, it shall be sent in to you in this room, unless you
have already breakfasted."
"No, thank you; I would rather not. You are very kind, and I am very
glad to have seen you once again. There is just one thing more,"
said she, colouring a little and hesitating. "This note to you was
found under papa's pillow after his death; some of it refers to past
things; but I should be glad if you could think as kindly as you can
of poor papa--and so--if you will read it--"
He took it and read it, not without emotion. Then he laid it down on
his table, and said -
"Poor man! he must have suffered a great deal for that night's work.
And you, Ellinor, you have suffered, too."
Yes, she had suffered; and he who spoke had been one of the
instruments of her suffering, although he seemed forgetful of it.
She shook her head a little for reply. Then she looked up at him--
they were both standing at the time--and said:
"I think I shall be happier now. I always knew it must be found out.
Once more, good-by, and thank you. I may take this letter, I
suppose?" said she, casting envious loving eyes at her father's note,
lying unregarded on the table.
"Oh! certainly, certainly," said he; and then he took her hand; he
held it, while he looked into her face. He had thought it changed
when he had first seen her, but it was now almost the same to him as
of yore. The sweet shy eyes, the indicated dimple in the cheek, and
something of fever had brought a faint pink flush into her usually
colourless cheeks. Married judge though he was, he was not sure if
she had not more charms for him still in her sorrow and her
shabbiness than the handsome stately wife in the next room, whose
looks had not been of the pleasantest when he left her a few minutes
before. He sighed a little regretfully as Ellinor went away. He had
obtained the position he had struggled for, and sacrificed for; but
now he could not help wishing that the slaughtered creature laid on
the shrine of his ambition were alive again.
The kedgeree was brought up again, smoking hot, but it remained
untasted by him; and though he appeared to be reading the Times, he
did not see a word of the distinct type. His wife, meanwhile,
continued her complaints of the untimely visitor, whose name he did
not give to her in its corrected form, as he was not anxious that she
should have it in her power to identify the call of this morning with
a possible future acquaintance.
When Ellinor reached Mr. Johnson's house in Hellingford that
afternoon, she found Miss Monro was there, and that she had been with
much difficulty restrained by Mr. Johnson from following her to
London.
Miss Monro fondled and purred inarticulately through her tears over
her recovered darling, before she could speak intelligibly enough to
tell her that Canon Livingstone had come straight to see her
immediately on his return to East Chester, and had suggested her
journey to Hellingford, in order that she might be of all the comfort
she could to Ellinor. She did not at first let out that he had
accompanied her to Hellingford; she was a little afraid of Ellinor's
displeasure at his being there; Ellinor had always objected so much
to any advance towards intimacy with him that Miss Monro had wished
to make. But Ellinor was different now.
"How white you are, Nelly!" said Miss Monro. "You have been
travelling too much and too fast, my child."
"My head aches!" said Ellinor, wearily. "But I must go to the
castle, and tell my poor Dixon that he is reprieved--I am so tired!
Will you ask Mr. Johnson to get me leave to see him? He will know
all about it."
She threw herself down on the bed in the spare room; the bed with the
heavy blue curtains. After an unheeded remonstrance, Miss Monro went
to do her bidding. But it was now late afternoon, and Mr. Johnson
said that it would be impossible for him to get permission from the
sheriff that night.
"Besides," said he, courteously, "one scarcely knows whether Miss
Wilkins may not give the old man false hopes--whether she has not
been excited to have false hopes herself; it might be a cruel
kindness to let her see him, without more legal certainty as to what
his sentence, or reprieve, is to be. By to-morrow morning, if I have
properly understood her story, which was a little confused--"
"She is so dreadfully tired, poor creature," put in Miss Monro, who
never could bear the shadow of a suspicion that Ellinor was not
wisest, best, in all relations and situations of life.
Mr. Johnson went on, with a deprecatory bow: "Well, then--it really
is the only course open to her besides--persuade her to rest for this
evening. By to-morrow morning I will have obtained the sheriff's
leave, and he will most likely have heard from London."
"Thank you! I believe that will be best."
"It is the only course," said he.
When Miss Monro returned to the bedroom, Ellinor was in a heavy
feverish slumber; so feverish and so uneasy did she appear, that,
after the hesitation of a moment or two, Miss Monro had no scruple in
wakening her.
But she did not appear to understand the answer to her request; she
did not seem even to remember that she had made any request.
The journey to England, the misery, the surprises, had been too much
for her. The morrow morning came, bringing the formal free pardon
for Abraham Dixon. The sheriff's order for her admission to see the
old man lay awaiting her wish to use it; but she knew nothing of all
this.
For days, nay weeks, she hovered between life and death, tended, as
of old, by Miss Monro, while good Mrs. Johnson was ever willing to
assist.
One summer evening in early June she wakened into memory, Miss Monro
heard the faint piping voice, as she kept her watch by the bedside.
"Where is Dixon?" asked she.
"At the canon's house at Bromham." This was the name of Dr.
Livingstone's county parish.
"Why?"
"We thought it better to get him into country air and fresh scenes at
once."
"How is he?"
"Much better. Get strong, and he shall come to see you."
"You are sure all is right?" said Ellinor.
"Sure, my dear. All is quite right."
Then Ellinor went to sleep again out of very weakness and weariness.
From that time she recovered pretty steadily. Her great desire was
to return to East Chester as soon as possible. The associations of
grief, anxiety, and coming illness, connected with Hellingford, made
her wish to be once again in the solemn, quiet, sunny close of East
Chester.
Canon Livingstone came over to assist Miss Monro in managing the
journey with her invalid. But he did not intrude himself upon
Ellinor, any more than he had done in coming from home.
The morning after her return, Miss Monro said:
"Do you feel strong enough to see Dixon?"
"Is he here?"
"He is at the canon's house. He sent for him from Bromham, in order
that he might be ready for you to see him when you wished."
"Please let him come directly," said Ellinor, flushing and trembling.
She went to the door to meet the tottering old man; she led him to
the easy-chair that had been placed and arranged for herself; she
knelt down before him, and put his hands on her head, he trembling
and shaking all the while.
"Forgive me all the shame and misery, Dixon. Say you forgive me; and
give me your blessing. And then let never a word of the terrible
past be spoken between us."
"It's not for me to forgive you, as never did harm to no one--"
"But say you do--it will ease my heart."
"I forgive thee!" said he. And then he raised himself to his feet
with effort, and, standing up above her, he blessed her solemnly.
After that he sat down, she by him, gazing at him.
"Yon's a good man, missy," he said, at length, lifting his slow eyes
and looking at her. "Better nor t'other ever was."
"He is a good man," said Ellinor.
But no more was spoken on the subject. The next day, Canon
Livingstone made his formal call. Ellinor would fain have kept Miss
Monro in the room, but that worthy lady knew better than to stop.
They went on, forcing talk on indifferent subjects. At last he could
speak no longer on everything but that which he had most at heart.
"Miss Wilkins!" (he had got up, and was standing by the mantelpiece,
apparently examining the ornaments upon it)--"Miss Wilkins! is there
any chance of your giving me a favourable answer now--you know what I
mean--what we spoke about at the Great Western Hotel, that day?"
Ellinor hung her head.
"You know that I was once engaged before?"
"Yes! I know; to Mr. Corbet--he that is now the judge; you cannot
suppose that would make any difference, if that is all. I have loved
you, and you only, ever since we met, eighteen years ago. Miss
Wilkins--Ellinor--put me out of suspense."
"I will!" said she, putting out her thin white hand for him to take
and kiss, almost with tears of gratitude, but she seemed frightened
at his impetuosity, and tried to check him. "Wait--you have not
heard all--my poor, poor father, in a fit of anger, irritated beyond
his bearing, struck the blow that killed Mr. Dunster--Dixon and I
knew of it, just after the blow was struck--we helped to hide it--we
kept the secret--my poor father died of sorrow and remorse--you now
know all--can you still love me? It seems to me as if I had been an
accomplice in such a terrible thing!"
"Poor, poor Ellinor!" said he, now taking her in his arms as a
shelter. "How I wish I had known of all this years and years ago: I
could have stood between you and so much!"
Those who pass through the village of Bromham, and pause to look over
the laurel-hedge that separates the rectory garden from the road, may
often see, on summer days, an old, old man, sitting in a wicker-
chair, out upon the lawn. He leans upon his stick, and seldom raises
his bent head; but for all that his eyes are on a level with the two
little fairy children who come to him in all their small joys and
sorrows, and who learnt to lisp his name almost as soon as they did
that of their father and mother.
Nor is Miss Monro often absent; and although she prefers to retain
the old house in the Close for winter quarters, she generally makes
her way across to Canon Livingstone's residence every evening.
SO ENDS "A DARK NIGHT'S WORK."

End of the Project Gutenberg eText A Dark Night's Work